The high speed of growth and comparative immaturity of digital industries has resulted in companies and individuals from a range of backgrounds and experiences setting themselves up as experts. But what happens when you choose a supplier that isn’t the right fit, or worse, leaves you stranded with uncompleted work? 

Using an open source technology such as Drupal provides you with a degree of protection. Being portable and open-source means suppliers can’t withhold the core code on the basis of license or ownership. Better still, unlike bespoke solutions there is a reasonable chance another supplier can on-board the code and successfully take over the project for you.

At Upbeat we have taken over many half finished projects and existing sites built by other agencies. There are inherent risks when changing supplier, so we recommend following a process that allows both parties to understand what exists and what needs improvement.  We have  developed a project rescue process that makes the process structured and reliable.

The five step process:

• Access  - Either access to your existing system, or we can set-up a copy
• Site audit - To help us understand the system 
• Technical Audit - To document technical risk areas
• On-Boarding - Steps to take over / host the code
• Support plans and feature backlogs - To support and develop your site into the future

If there are any issues that need to be resolved as part of transitioning the site, a good audit process will identify these as high priority items. The process documents other recommendations so that you can plan these into your future roadmap. These may be complex or high-risk areas that should be investigated further, performance or stability improvements, or even SEO or analytics suggestions.