Redesign issue workflow process

Problem to solve

• Workflow labels are not being used (out of 440k issues, only 58k have them: ~13% or for just open issues, out of 85k, 13k have them: ~15%).
• Across the organization, there is no easy way to to find all issues which need validation, all issues which need planning/design, all issues which are ready/in development and all issues which are complete.
• The current workflow labels were created over time and are somewhat unrelated to one another (they're unstructured). It would be good to look at them as a whole and determine how/if they're meeting our needs.
• It's difficult to query and report on issues, because each team does it differently. For example, the current workflow labels are used by only a handful of teams, and used in different ways for each of them:
  • https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/workflow/#updating-workflow-labels-throughout-development
  • https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/infrastructure/team/scalability/#workflow-labels
  • https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product-development-flow/
  • https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/development/enablement/systems/gitaly/#agile-workflow-in-gitaly
  • https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/development/sec/govern/sp-ti-planning.html
  • https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/development/dev/create/ide/#-remote-development-planning-process

I ran a quick poll in slack #whats-happening-at-gitlab and of 74 responses, 40 (54%) were aware of and/or believe they follow the https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product-development-flow/

Proposal

It's going to be hard to change what we currently have "in place". However, as an MVC, we can start adding some labels automatically, while we determine a set of labels that will meet most teams' workflows.

These changes are not going to be disruptive to current workflows. They are additional labels to help us with high-level queries. You will have time to change your processes if it makes sense for your team.

The CoS team has discussed this plan and agreed with implementing some automation to help move us in this direction.

Implementation

Step 1 ✅

We are going to an experiment... mapping the existing workflows to 4 simple "top level" labels:

• ~"issue::validation"
• ~"issue::planning"
• ~"issue::development"
• ~"issue::complete"

This step is already complete, and triage-ops has been configured to automatically add these new labels when issues are created/updated. A merge request has been raised to migrate all of the other open issues, but we're going to hold a little before we pull the trigger.

At this point, nobody is expected to manually assign these labels (we will communicate the planned change, but not expect any additional effort from team or community members), but we should now be in a unique position to easily group/filter issues to see what needs validating, what needs designing, what needs development and what is complete.

Step 2

• Agree and create the new lower level "workflow labels": ~"validation::xxx", ~"planning::xxx" etc.
• Create a mapping for existing workflow labels to these lower level buckets (not all existing labels will be "mappable" and code them into triage-ops to automatically assign).
• At this point, we will still not expect anyone to manually assign labels.
• We will probably now want to take some time to review the labels and see if we feel there are any gaps.

New detail level labels

• ~"issue::validation"
  • validationto-do
• ~"issue::planning"
  • planningto-do
  • planningrefinement
• ~"issue::development"
  • developmentto-do
  • developmentworking
  • developmentblocked
  • developmentawaiting security release
  • developmentin-review
• ~"issue::complete"
  • completeunverified
  • completeverified

Mappings

The new "gray" labels will be automatically added based on the existing/old "blue" workflow labels.

Team members can continue to apply the "blue" workflow labels and all processes will remain unchanged.

• ~"issue::validation"
  • workflowproblem validation => validationto-do
  • workflowstart => validationto-do
  • workflowvalidation backlog => validationto-do
  • workflowneeds issue review => validationto-do
• ~"issue::planning"
  • workflowplanning breakdown => planningto-do
  • workflowissue reviewed => planningto-do
  • workflowrefinement => planningrefinement
  • workflowdesign => planningrefinement
  • workflowready for design => planningrefinement
  • workflowsolution validation => planningrefinement
• ~"issue::development"
  • workflowscheduling => developmentto-do
  • workflowready for development => developmentto-do
  • workflowin dev => developmentworking
  • workflowawaiting security release => developmentawaiting security release
  • workflowblocked => developmentblocked
  • workflowin review => developmentin-review
• ~"issue::complete"
  • workflowverification => completeunverified
  • workflowstaging => completeunverified
  • workflowstaging-canary => completeunverified
  • workflowstaging-ref => completeunverified
  • workflowcanary => completeunverified
  • workflowproduction => completeunverified
  • workflowcomplete => completeverified

Step 3

• Figure out how to deprecate the old issue workflow labels.
• Get everyone using the new ones.
• Continue adding the new issue workflow labels automatically? (remove the old ones at the same time).

We could do this team by team?

NOTE: We will not be deleting any labels used in merge request workflow and will not be changing the merge request workflow process.

Other

See #77 (comment 1512069941)

Current workflow label usage:

See counts/totals

label	status	count
workflow::In review	open	0
workflow::In review	closed	33
workflow::awaiting security release	open	13
workflow::awaiting security release	closed	241
workflow::blocked	open	986
workflow::blocked	closed	953
workflow::canary	open	0
workflow::canary	closed	133
workflow::complete	open	13
workflow::complete	closed	6824
workflow::design	open	440
workflow::design	closed	1129
workflow::failed current version	open	0
workflow::failed current version	closed	0
workflow::feature-flagged	open	7
workflow::feature-flagged	closed	33
workflow::in dev	open	559
workflow::in dev	closed	5362
workflow::in review	open	307
workflow::in review	closed	10634
workflow::in-review	open	1
workflow::in-review	closed	3
workflow::issue reviewed	open	0
workflow::issue reviewed	closed	3
workflow::needs issue review	open	11
workflow::needs issue review	closed	17
workflow::open for discussion	open	0
workflow::open for discussion	closed	0
workflow::planning breakdown	open	1776
workflow::planning breakdown	closed	1717
workflow::post-deploy-db-production	open	2
workflow::post-deploy-db-production	closed
workflow::post-deploy-db-staging	open	0
workflow::post-deploy-db-staging	closed	2
workflow::problem validation	open	1131
workflow::problem validation	closed	1206
workflow::production	open	22
workflow::production	closed
workflow::ready for design	open	612
workflow::ready for design	closed	272
workflow::ready for development	open	2959
workflow::ready for development	closed	4041
workflow::ready for review	open	20
workflow::ready for review	closed	227
workflow::ready-for-review	open	0
workflow::ready-for-review	closed	0
workflow::refinement	open	1435
workflow::refinement	closed	1378
workflow::scheduling	open	724
workflow::scheduling	closed	733
workflow::solution validation	open	691
workflow::solution validation	closed	922
workflow::staging	open	3
workflow::staging	closed	279
workflow::staging-canary	open	0
workflow::staging-canary	closed	6
workflow::staging-ref	open	0
workflow::staging-ref	closed	1
workflow::start	open	486
workflow::start	closed	362
workflow::tw-test-status	open	0
workflow::tw-test-status	closed	0
workflow::validation backlog	open	731
workflow::validation backlog	closed	448
workflow::verification	open	530
workflow::verification	closed	7908
workflow::version promoted	open	0
workflow::version promoted	closed	0