Delivery Group FY24 Q3 direction
In the 2023-08-07 Delivery Weekly call @marin shared that we need to pivot from our original plans to start focusing on Cells. This issue shared the reasons behind this and gives detail about what is changing, and when. Please feel free to post comments if anything is unclear.
What is changing?
Delivery Group will switch focus in Q3 to work on:
- Adapting the release process (this OKR is unchanged). We'll make the necessary changes to prepare Delivery for the changing monthly release date and improve security releases to be able to handle multiple security releases per month.
- Reducing downtime to Dedicated deployments. (An updated OKR). This Objective will continue our work to understand blue/green and gradual rollout strategies but we'll focus on the Dedicated infrastructure instead of GitLab.com.
As part of this change, we will be blurring the lines between the two Delivery teams to allow us to make the best use of our limited Q3 capacity. More details will be shared about how we plan to kick off the Q3 work but please be prepared to be flexible to allow us to smoothly move in and out of release management at the same time as we achieve both Delivery goals.
Initial project teams
For the beginning of this quarter we'll have the following project teams:
- Adapting the release process:
- Part one involves the work to Update Delivery tools and processes to support the updated release date. Team: @mayra-cabrera (DRI), @rpereira2, @sabrams
- Part two involves the work to support multiple security releases per month. Team: @sabrams (DRI), @rpereira2, @mayra-cabrera (after RM)
- Reduce the risk of downtime and deployment related incidents via Zero Downtime deployments: Team: @nolith (DRI), @jennykim-gitlab, @ahyield (after Patcher restoration and maintenance), @dat.tang.gitlab (after onboarding), @vglafirov (after RM)
We'll review teams and projects around each release date so we can move people in and out of release management smoothly. Updates will be posted on this issue for visibility.
A few logistical changes will be needed:
- An updated OKR has been written - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gitlab-OKRs/-/work_items/3546
- A new epic ( &1092 (closed)) and issues will be created for the updated OKR
- Team members will be assigned to projects for at least the first phase. We expect people will move around as needed.
- We'll be trying out some different demo formats and cadences. Invites have been updated but we should expect that we will need to iterate on the format to make these as effective as possible.
What isn't changing?
- We won't be changing any management reporting lines as part of this change.
- Our OKR to Adapt the release process is unchanged.
- The planned release management schedule is unchanged.
Why are we changing?
GitLab is rapidly moving towards Cells, a highly scalable architecture but also one that will need a very different deployment strategy. We've learned a lot about deployments through release management as well as our Q2 work to dynamically route traffic to create more deployment capabilities but all of this has been learned on the current GitLab.com infrastructure.
Cells will be built using Dedicated infrastructure so we need to learn how this works and make a plan to implement effective deployments. We'll learn a lot more as we go through Q3 but a few essentials:
- Dedicated is hosted in AWS and makes use of GET.
- Dedicated is currently being ported to GCP. The GCP Dedicated tech stack will be used for Cells.
- Cells are going to be interesting because we have a task to effectively rollout a package to a single cell (equivalent to our current auto-deploy), as well as the task of needing to manage the effective rollout across the fleet of Cells.
Couldn't we have decided this sooner?
In an ideal world, we would have known about the need for this change and made the change a few months ago. Sadly reality didn't work out that way so we've decided it is better to change now rather than lose a quarter.
What happens now?
Most of the logistical changes have been made. @amyphillips and @mbursi will be continuing to review and adjust things as needed.
- Please raise any questions or concerns with your manager, or comment on this issue.
- Please continue with your current planned work using this week's team priorities - internal as your guide.