Release 15.4 Planning Issue

marked this issue as related to #148 (closed)

changed the description

UX Planning 🧵

If we are looking to implement gitlab-org/gitlab#263310 in 15.5 we'll need UI finalized in 15.4

Inform users of pending deployment approval MVC (gitlab-org/gitlab#357026) and exploring Deployment Issues as part of the larger solution

@cbalane I added Add description from release post content into ... (gitlab-org/gitlab#234009 - closed) as a P1 as we discussed.

Added:

@cbalane I removed Provide a mechanism to clean up stale environments (gitlab-org/gitlab#19724 - closed) as it looks like it needs some UX.

@rayana @nicolewilliams capturing some of the notes from our sync today here (please correct me if I missed anything). per Rayana:

there is a lot of scope currently in the UX plan so we'll need to cut scope (size of problems not necessarily number of issues).
Some issues may have open questions and need research.
Environments page cleanup related items need to be prioritized so changes are not conflicting

This is my stack rank list of priorities:

Support Approval Rules in Deployment Approval UI (gitlab-org/gitlab#355708 - closed)
Show multiple deployment approval comments when... (gitlab-org/gitlab#368640 - closed)
Support multiple approval rules in project-leve... (gitlab-org/gitlab#367700 - closed)
Add dynamically populated organization-level en... (gitlab-org/gitlab#241506 - closed)
Create annotated tags with Releases UI (gitlab-org/gitlab#362481 - closed)
Inform users of pending deployment approval MVC (gitlab-org/gitlab#357026)
Add form validation when required approvers exc... (gitlab-org/gitlab#356228)
Provide a mechanism to clean up stale environments (gitlab-org/gitlab#19724 - closed)

Rationale for priority:

We need to continue iterations for deployment approval to make that feature more useful for customers and grow AMAU and overall SMAU
Cross-project environments is the next big problem we want to tackle for Environments and ~"deployment-direction"
The others are important but lower in priority

@rayana @emilybauman please review and let me know what you think you can complete

@nicolewilliams

@cbalane I removed Provide a mechanism to clean up stale environments (gitlab-org/gitlab#19724 - closed) as it looks like it needs some UX.

thanks. this comment is for the eng plan right? can we continue these discussions in the eng thread instead of the UX thread?

Thanks for the tag here @cbalane - I'll take a look through them this week and add additional feedback around how many I believe are reasonable to schedule into 15.4 given that some may need additional validation.

@rayana - Just to confirm, by the start of this milestone (15.4) I should be taking over all issue work correct? In which case we should only looking to be scheduling issues I can finish up, not the both of us. Are any of these issues currently being worked on?

Added Release::Px labels to all of the design issues in the table. Will continue to add/update labels to indicate priority

@cbalane @rayana - Adding in some context from our sync discussion today around the 15.4 UX Plan:

Capacity:

I'll be away for a portion of 15.4 (9 days at the end of the milestone), but am planning to start some of these issues about a week earlier in 15.3. This should mean my capacity is only reduced by 4 days. As an FYI my full PTO spans from September 6th to 20th.
I am still trying to figure out my appropriate capacity for release work, so bare with me for the next milestone or two.

Good to prioritize:

The following issues will be worked on collectively as one larger initiative in the milestone. They will be my first priority to get to, which I may start slightly earlier than 15.4:

I'll be taking on the following, smaller issues which require some issue cleanup:

We'll be starting on research initiative on how users would like to be notified about pending approvals:

The results of this will drive the solution for Inform users of pending deployment approval
FYI @wleidheiser

Pushing out of the milestone:

We are going to be pushing off the following issue to another milestone, due to capacity:

As a side note - I will go through each issue and add in weights this afternoon, as well as create the research issue for validating how users want to be notified about pending approvals.

@emilybauman

We'll be starting on research initiative on how users would like to be notified about pending approvals. The results of this will drive the solution for Inform users of pending deployment approval

The issue you linked to has a defined user problem and user experience goal. Do you see this problem as something we still need to explore further? Or is this a case where we know enough to start testing out a proposed solution?

Either way, when you draft up a research issue, tag me on it, so we can discuss next steps.

@emilybauman thanks for documenting the notes from the sync conversation! i'll add the items we pushed to future milestone(s)

Thanks for the comment @wleidheiser

The research effort I was interested in was seeing if todo's would be the ideal way of notifying users of the pending approval, or if this would just create more noise. Is there some other method they would prefer? I think the problem is valid, people need a way to be notified that there are pending approvals. Its the method of notifying I don't think has been fully flushed out (though I may be missing something here so feel free to add more context).

@cbalane - Sounds great! I originally had Provide a mechanism to clean up stale environments as a stretch goal, which I would get to if I had time, but as I'm just planning out my capacity for the first time I want to be cautious not to over-commit. I'll go ahead and break down the ones without weights today and then we should be good to go

@emilybauman

The research effort I was interested in was seeing if todo's would be the ideal way of notifying users of the pending approval, or if this would just create more noise.

This sounds like a solution validation study to me since you'll be testing out a proposed idea to tackle the problem. Do you agree?

This sounds like a solution validation study to me since you'll be testing out a proposed idea to tackle the problem. Do you agree?

Yep, sorry @wleidheiser, I should have been more clear but that's exactly what I would propose

@emilybauman No worries. It was more to make sure I was aligned with what you proposed.

Perfect, I'll go ahead and open up the Research Issue so I can start planning. Thanks @wleidheiser!

@cbalane - Weights are all added in, this is good to go

FYI @wleidheiser @cbalane - There seems to be a workshop coming up about notifications, which I plan to bring our pending deployment approval problem to. This might directly overlap with some of the research I was planning to do around how users want to be notified.

I'll keep you all updated, but thought I would just surface it so you knew

@emilybauman thanks for letting us know, that does sound timely. looking forward to hearing how it goes and making progress on our use case for deployment approvals!

Eng Planning 🧵

Setting %15.3 ~"Release::P2" as %15.4 ~"Release::P1"

Added Publish Releases without giving access to sourc... (gitlab-org/gitlab#216485 - closed) as a P1. This was originally on the 15.3 scheduled but we identified a blocking issue which was put in 15.3 instead.

Added "Skip outdated deployment jobs" should evaluate... (gitlab-org/gitlab#363328 - closed) as a suggested P2

@cbalane I removed the items that are likely to be completed in 15.3. I also added some bug/maintenance issues:

Average number of approval metrics failing in S... (gitlab-org/gitlab#367213 - closed)
Tags search doesn't work on older tags (gitlab-org/gitlab#367667 - closed)
Project Settings > Repo > Deploy tokens > Refre... (gitlab-org/gitlab#22794 - closed)
Remove feature flag: ajax_new_deploy_token (gitlab-org/gitlab#364296 - closed)
Inconsistent behaviour with environment widgets... (gitlab-org/gitlab#346666)
Remove tag name restrictions for guest users in... (gitlab-org/gitlab#345568 - closed)
Remove delegate as it's redundant in app/presen... (gitlab-org/gitlab#341231 - closed)

And a couple of suggestions for feature:

We can edit/discuss this week in our sync review!

@cbalane adding Can't create a release based on a Git tag that ... (gitlab-org/gitlab#34554 - closed) as a suggested stretch/p3 since it is weighted and ready to go.

@cbalane thanks for working on this! I've removed all of the issues that we already pulled into 15.3, so now it is pretty clear that we will need to add more items to this milestone. I removed a few other items (details below).

I also removed gitlab-org/gitlab#369032 (closed) because we really should complete the POC first. However, since the team also had questions on the priority of this - can you address @kencjohnston's question so we are all on the same page?

Also, I've removed the following P2's as they are still in the design queue and don't have engineering weights:

If we can get these refined and weighted in the next few days, then we can add them back. But I wanted to make sure this issue was reflecting what is currently ready for scheduling.

@nicolewilliams thank you for updating and making sure it reflects what is ready for scheduling. and yes, I've responded to Kenny. I'll do another pass at this issue today/tomorrow and update priorities.

@nicolewilliams I saw that you removed Publish Releases without giving access to sourc... (gitlab-org/gitlab#216485 - closed), though I didn't see that one pulled into %15.3 and it's ready for dev.

@cbalane yes! Sorry I lumped that with items pulled in 15.3 because of this thread which basically says it is getting solved by the work in Control visibility of deployments-related funct... (gitlab-org/gitlab#361586 - closed) which is currently workflowin dev.

@nicolewilliams ah I see now, thanks for explaining!

adding Create API endpoint to update a Protected Envir... (gitlab-org/gitlab#351854 - closed)

adding Show tags related to deployed commit on Environ... (gitlab-org/gitlab#15419 - closed) back in since the issue has a proposal and is weighted

I'd like to add https://gitlab.com/gitlab-data/analytics/-/issues/13425+ and pair with someone from the team to help me investigate. it would help solve a customer problem and also lead to a better overall understanding of our key metrics

@nicolewilliams potentially another bug to look into gitlab-org/gitlab#215162 (comment 1058685429)

@cbalane thanks I had already pulled it in!

@cbalane I'm doing a last minute review before the milestone starts tomorrow. I'm going to pull in a few more typebug and typemaintenance issues.

But I also swapped out CMAU instrumentation for Instrumentation for Environments Pages Users (gitlab-org/gitlab#355690 - closed) since it wasn't ready to go. Feel free to remove that if you prefer to pull in something else instead.

thanks @nicolewilliams sounds good

TW Planning 🧵

cc @rdickenson

Team review 🧵

@gitlab-org/ci-cd/release-group team, sorry for the late ping here, please see this plan for the next milestone. let me know if you have any feedback or questions!

Looks good to me from a UX standpoint. Thanks @cbalane.

@cbalane I left one minor comment in gitlab-org/gitlab#368151 (comment 1068605698), other than that LGTM

thanks for the review @shinya.maeda!

Final review 🧵

@nicolewilliams I've made a few updates including bugs and issues that I saw you flagged for %15.4, mostly for P2 and P3 priority.

changed the description

mentioned in issue #148 (closed)

changed the description

Issue	Weight	Note
Search for environment name in the Environments... (gitlab-org/gitlab#10754 - closed)	4	typefeature direction frontend backend release post item
Keep expanded state for details in the Environm... (gitlab-org/gitlab#353631 - closed)	1	typefeature frontend UX
Create API endpoint to update a Protected Envir... (gitlab-org/gitlab#351854 - closed)	1	typefeature direction backend release post item
Show tags related to deployed commit on Environ... (gitlab-org/gitlab#15419 - closed)	2	typefeature customer frontend backend release post item
Support variable expansion on environment:auto_... (gitlab-org/gitlab#365140 - closed)	2	typefeature backend release post item
Regression - Gitlab release evidence not being ... (gitlab-org/gitlab#371050 - closed)	1	typebug regression
Follow-up from "Resolve "Can't set "never" as a... (gitlab-org/gitlab#368151 - closed)	1	typebug
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-data/analytics/-/issues/13425+		KPI investigation
Show approval comment after deployment is approved (gitlab-org/gitlab#370423 - closed)	1	typefeature frontend

Issue	Weight	Note
POC: Add description from release post content ... (gitlab-org/gitlab#369032 - closed)		POC
Make it more obvious that a request to deploy a... (gitlab-org/gitlab#323660 - closed)	2	typefeature frontend SUSFY22 Q2 - Incomplete
Static environments in MRs should not be stoppe... (gitlab-org/gitlab#299412 - closed)	2	typefeature
Resource group timeout (gitlab-org/gitlab#349336 - closed)	2	typebug backend customer
Publish Releases without giving access to sourc... (gitlab-org/gitlab#216485 - closed)	1	typefeature backend direction
GraphQL query for fetching deployment information (gitlab-org/gitlab#368680 - closed)	2	typemaintenance backend

Issue	Weight	Note
Instrumentation for Environments Pages Users (gitlab-org/gitlab#355690 - closed)	1	typefeature instrumentation
Project Settings > Repo > Deploy tokens > Refre... (gitlab-org/gitlab#22794 - closed)	1	typebug frontend
Inconsistent behaviour with environment widgets... (gitlab-org/gitlab#346666)	1	typebug backend
Can't create a release based on a Git tag that ... (gitlab-org/gitlab#34554 - closed)	2	SUSImpacting backend
POC: Update GraphQL API to support environment ... (gitlab-org/gitlab#370421 - closed)		POC typemaintenance
GraphQL query for fetching latest deployments a... (gitlab-org/gitlab#370699 - closed)	2	typemaintenance

Issue	Weight	Note
Strange error message when group milestones are... (gitlab-org/gitlab#277397)	1
Docs - product feedback: Create a release by us... (gitlab-org/gitlab#348680)	3

Release 15.4 Planning Issue

Internal Milestone Review & Discussion

Capacity

Deliverables

Technical Research

Design and User Research

Docs

OKR Alignment

Planning Tasks

Designs

Child items ...

Activity

Capacity:

Good to prioritize:

Pushing out of the milestone:

Release 15.4 Planning Issue

Internal Milestone Review & Discussion

Capacity

Deliverables

Technical Research

Design and User Research

Docs

OKR Alignment

Planning Tasks

Relates to

Activity

Capacity:

Good to prioritize:

Pushing out of the milestone: