How to reduce the impact of far-reaching work

Why is this change being made?

The issue here explains a lot of context.

Ultimately, there are areas at GitLab that have a larger impact on the application when they make even the smallest change. This MR hopes to define how you might realize that your change could have a larger impact, and some ideas on how to proactively reduce that impact.

Communication plan

• Announce in Slack channels
  • #vp-development
  • #development
  • #backend
  • #frontend
• Include in .com update
• Dev sub-department meeting
• Development meeting
• Add to #WIR
• Circulate amongst DRIs for identified areas so they can add more specifics about their area to this page

Author Checklist

• Provided a concise title for the MR
• Added a description to this MR explaining the reasons for the proposed change, per say-why-not-just-what
  • Copy/paste the Slack conversation to document it for later, or upload screenshots. Verify that no confidential data is added.
• Assign reviewers for this change to the correct DRI(s)
  • If the DRI for the page/s being updated isn’t immediately clear, then assign it to one of the people listed in the "Maintained by" section in on the page being edited.
  • If your manager does not have merge rights, please ask someone to merge it AFTER it has been approved by your manager in #mr-buddies.
• If the changes affect team members, or warrant an announcement in another way, please consider posting an update in #whats-happening-at-gitlab linking to this MR.
  • If this is a change that directly impacts the majority of global team members, it should be a candidate for #company-fyi. Please work with internal communications and check the handbook for examples.

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