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Remove requirements management as a Plan product category

Victor Wu requested to merge remove-requirements-management into master

Currently, the Certify group in Plan has these three categories:

  • Requirements Management
  • Quality Management
  • Service Desk

Requirements management is the riskiest to be a successful new product category in GitLab. It is also non-existent in GitLab the product currently (we have no features in this category currently). So eliminating it is relatively straightforward from a product perspective.

Requirements management is riskiest because there are no clear users. We have a few customers who have expressed interest in this feature, but it is not clear how they would use it. Furthermore, the vast majority of our existing customers or prospects have not expressed an interest for requirements management. Also, it is a more niche market since most of our existing customers and future customers would not use it. Only in very specific industries like construction or aerospace or similar industries would it be needed. Lastly, the biggest risk is that I don't see a clear path for GitLabbers to use it either. All the other features in Plan have some usage by GitLabbers, even Service Desk.

In contrast, Quality Management would be used by our Quality team and they have continually expressed interest and our participating in laying out the features and designs. We would be able to build out Quality Management with this low risk approach since we have initial users. Customers and prospects have also expressed interest. Not a large number of customers, but much more than Requirements Management.

Service Desk also is a huge market opportunity. Our customers right now have not asked for it, but it is a chicken and egg problem. We are not approaching the specific personas/customers that need Service Desk and also it is a not a built out feature set yet. But it there is a big market out there for this type of tool. Furthermore, Service Desk is already being used by Legal at GitLab. In the past, Support at GitLab has also expressed interest in using Service Desk, once it becomes more mature. They would be willing to partner with us in driving those specific features.

So in summary, I think we should remove Requirements management as a product category, and let the other two product categories be the focus of Certify.

Edited by Victor Wu

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