Proposal: Transfer ownership of release MVP to Contributor Success
Overview
In order to support the simplification and automation of the release post, I propose that the nomination, selection, and social recognition of the MVP be owned by the Contributor Success.
The current process is time-consuming for the release post manager and they are often ill-equipped to make the best selection. Release post managers are volunteer PMs with limited exposure to community contributions as they are focused on their area of ownership on a milestone-to-milestone basis.
The MVP recognition is an important part of GitLab's history and it should be maintained. However, it should be transferred to a team who can more effectively keep a pulse on the contributors who deserve to be recognized for their work.
Current process
- Each milestone a nomination issue is automatically generated
- Relevant teams are mentioned in the template in the context of the instructions for making a nomination
- A link to a community contributions dashboard is provided in the template to surface active contributors
- The release post manager (RPM) solicits nominations and votes via Slack reminders
- The RPM chooses an MVP
- RPM announces selection and confirms with PM that the contribution will be included in the release
- RPM collaborates with the nominator to provide a write-up and adds the content to the release post
- RPM adds the MVP information to mvps.yml which populates the Hall of Fame
- RPM mentions
@community-team
in the#community-relations
channel to asks them to send the swag pack to the MVP.
Proposed process
- Contributor Success will own the MVP process as it currently exists
- The nomination issue will be generated along with the other release post assets
- Contributor Success and update the MVP information in the release post MR
- ProdOps will remove the release post manager responsibilities from documentation
Responsibilities
- MVP nomination and selection
- Publishing the announcement at a public URL
- Updating mvps.yml
- Sharing the public URL internally and externally
Transition plan
The current process will remain in place for the 15.8 release post which will be published on 2023-01-22.
During 15.8 and leading up to 2023-01-22, the following steps will be taken:
-
Contributor Success will develop their workflow for MVP nomination, selection, and announcement -
Contributor Success will confirm their workflow includes a step to add the MVP information andpost
URL to mvps.yml -
ProdOps will remove the release post manager's MVP responsibilities from the documentation -
ProdOps will add an automation step to pull from mvps.yml and link to thepost
URL from the release post