Shifting Gears: Product Mindset Takes Center Stage at the London Drupal Meetup

The London Drupal User Group is set to host an evening session titled "Cutting Through the Noise: Product Mindset for Drupal Teams" on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. The event will be held at The Children’s Society offices near Old Street, London, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM GMT.

The session will feature Paul McCrodden, a seasoned product leader with 18 years of experience in software engineering and product management. Having recently spoken at DrupalCamp England, McCrodden will share insights on how adopting a product mindset can enhance focus, clarity, and project delivery for Drupal teams.

To learn more about the event, The Drop Times reached out to both the organizers and the featured speaker, Paul McCrodden. Rajeev Kumar responded on behalf of the organizers. Assistant organizer Anurag Kamboj played a key role in gathering the inputs for this article.

Rajeev Kumar, responding on behalf of the organizers, shed light on the motivation behind this month's theme and the broader community goals of the London Drupal User Group.

When asked why the group chose "product mindset" as the theme, Rajeev explained:

“We chose 'product mindset' because it speaks to the real issues that many Drupal teams confront today. It's not simply about creating features; it's about delivering meaningful outcomes. This approach fosters clearer alignment, improved collaboration, and a stronger focus on value. As teams become more cross-functional, we felt it was the right time to bring this conversation to the forefront.”

Rajeev also emphasized the group’s commitment to fostering an inclusive and welcoming environment, especially for newcomers:

“For us, the London Drupal User Group is all about keeping the community connected and supported. It’s a space where people can learn, share, and feel like they belong—whether they’re new to Drupal or long-time contributors.  
We aim to keep it friendly and approachable, especially for first-time visitors. There’s no pressure or gatekeeping—just engaging talks, practical insights, and a chance to connect with others who share your interests.”

Paul McCrodden, whose background includes working with renowned organizations such as Mitsubishi Motors, X-Team, and Pantheon, also shared his thoughts with The Drop Times regarding the upcoming session and the importance of fostering a product mindset.

Read his insightful responses in the next section.

TDT: In your view, how can adopting a product mindset help Drupal teams better navigate the balance between technical priorities and user needs?

• Tech exists as a means to bring the organisation value through delivering viable products that satisfy user need
• The balance is usually around an understanding of “why” something is a technical priority in the context of how it can help support the organisation in satisfying user needs.
• We could ask “is this required NOW in relation to supporting the above?” If the answer is “Yes”, then it might be a clearer priority. But if the answer is “No”, then we need to ask about what happens if we don’t deliver it. If the answer is “not much”, we can likely ignore it, but if there is an element of “risk”, then we need to do a risk assessment.
• Much of what a Product Manager does is risk assessment in order to mitigate risk of delivering a product successfully over time, and prioritisation is always relative. It’s a trade-off.

TDT: How do you see the role of product thinking evolving within open-source communities like Drupal, where collaboration often happens across organizations and time zones?

• Product-thinking is certainly more common in spaces or companies where it's a more life/death situation (for the company). It’s imperative to deliver value via management of the product.
• The nemesis to that approach is more common in Drupal or open-source CMS world. It’s a “project” based approach. Client decides they need Y, so please don’t question that, and here’s the money for this project, to deliver Y.
• We certainly see the start of a shift now, especially in Drupal. We see DrupalCMS, a product based on Drupal. We see LocalGovDrupal, another product built on top of Drupal.
• We also see Headless products, open source ones like Next Drupal by Chapter 3, and commercial products like NodeHive CMS by Netnode. I’m sure there are others, but all of these products need product thinking, product management, to deliver a coherent successful product. This approach will trickle down to the users and community around these products.
• Then there’s AI: this will be ‘“product” on steroids’ where the successful products will go through very fast iterations of “build-measure-learn-repeat”.

TDT: What are the key takeaways you hope attendees will leave with, and who do you think will benefit the most from this session?

Who will benefit:

• Delivery teams: design, dev, QA, management
• Solo developers
• Senior management

Key takeaways:

• A realisation of how your deliverables when working with Drupal, are indeed products
• Big-picture thinking to ensure you are working towards the vision, towards success
• Helpful perspective to rethink your day-to-day delivery priorities

The upcoming session promises valuable insights for Drupal professionals looking to enhance collaboration, deliver real value, and foster a stronger product-driven approach within their teams. Follow this link to book your spots.