Evaluate Group Conversation attendance and engagement

Build a 1 pager: what’s intended, is it doing it? Who is showing up? What does it tell us? Recommendations

Report

Goal of this document: Evaluate whether group conversations are effective based on its stated purpose, looking at engagement numbers.

What is a Group Conversation (GC)

From: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/group-conversations/

Group Conversations are recurring 25 minute meetings providing regular updates across all GitLab teams on a rotating schedule.

[vs. Key review] Generally, they cover the same or similar content, but for different audiences.

	Key Review	Group Conversation
Audience	Management	General GitLab Team
Tone	Formal	Informational
Discussion	High-context	Low-context

The Key Review is intended for senior experts to ask questions. The Group Conversation is open to the entire GitLab team to ask questions.

Frequency

Varies based on department: typically 1-2 times per quarter.

Engagement numbers

Note: Chart is 2023-02 to 2023-10.

Observations

• Attendance peak: 25 ~= 1.25% of team members
• Doc viewership peak: 164 ~= 8.2% of team members
• Slight trend up over time without significant number of new hires
• Recording views: 0-1 unless public stream
• Average % attendees in function = 75%
• Average duration = 15 minutes

Please see Group Conversation / Key Review Attendee Data for raw data.

Strengths and Weaknesses of GCs

Strengths

GCs support collaboration and transparency. While it’s not a large percentage of the company attending, GCs are a good way to provide space for both those in and outside of the function to ask questions and get updates. Most likely, it’s the managers or others who work with or next to the groups that are attending. It’s possible that they may be making connections between departments when necessary.

Without them, we may need other forums for information sharing and getting questions answered.

Weaknesses

While GCs repurpose Key Review content, they still require team time, attendance and preparation. Limited attendance and review may indicate that information is not being effectively or efficiently distributed among folks who may most benefit from it.

Questions to answer

1. What is the purpose of GCs? It is not clearly stated in the handbook.
2. Are GCs serving this purpose?
3. Considering that a high percentage of attendees are from the same function, are these being used for those within the function to ask questions? Are there existing forums and are GCs duplicative?
4. What is the best way to achieve what GCs intend to achieve? This could be adjusting GCs or sharing information in other ways.

Decision

Next iteration to go fully async.

1. Generally, within 7 days after key review.
2. Put the GC deck in the following GDrive folder. Ensure that this version of the deck has no MNPI.
3. Use the template in the GC agenda doc to create a section for your group, filling in all the relevant information.
4. Post in #whats-happening-at-gitlab when ready. See template Slack announcement which you can use, and personalize.
5. Cross-post in #group-conversations.
6. Host to reply to questions/comments 3 working days after posting.

New doc template

2023-xx-xx <Team> Group Conversation
DRI: 
Slides: <add full url>
Pre-recorded video: <full URL, if applicable>
Key Review Agenda (applicable if you also host a Key Review): 
Date with estimated time when DRI will answer questions: <use ISO format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM UTC>

Questions:
FirstName LastName: Question?

Action items

1. Update handbook: gitlab-com/content-sites/handbook!1555 (merged)
2. Update GC agenda including template
3. Draft wording
4. Cross-post: #group-conversations, #eba-team so they are aware AMA info has been split off to new page, and sync info was removed from GC page
5. Request for while you were iterating newsletter: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/internal-communications/newsletter/-/issues/53#note_1684936922

Comms

*Group Conversations are now fully async*

[Group Conversations](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/content-sites/handbook/-/merge_requests/1555) (GC) are becoming asynchronous. 

We heard from team members who host GCs. Planning, preparing for, and moderating these meetings requires a time commitment for them and their teams. When we looked at GC attendance between 2023-02 to 2023-10, we found that on average, fewer than 10 people (<1% of the company) participated in the GC meeting synchronously. 8x more participants accessed the agenda. This indicates that team members are primarily engaging with and getting value from GCs outside of the synchronous meeting. It also indicates that there is an opportunity to free up time for a number of people involved in hosting these.

As a next iteration, we are moving the Q&A to be asynchronous. This will continue to provide an opportunity for team updates and team member questions. It will also decrease the amount of time that teams spend preparing for these.

Teams will put GC slide decks into a single shared Google Drive folder, so the decks are easier for everyone to find and post in #whats-happening-at-gitlab and #group-conversations when ready. Please continue to ask questions in the Group Conversations agenda.