Communicate changes to Support when related to user counts: active/billable, max, trueups
Summary
Some code changes, specifically relating to the user counts on a subscription or license, has an impact on Support and how tickets can be troubleshooted. Often we run into strange behaviour and will reactively create a bug issue, wait for it to be scheduled, and potentially resolved if it has appropriate severity and priority. A lot of time can be spent on figuring out whether the thing is indeed a bug or expected or the result of an intended change.
There is also the reality of a rapidly changing product and Support trying to keep up with the changes. Remembering which bug was in which version of GitLab feels like half of the job sometimes
Proposal
Because we know that changes to specific code can impact Support and ticket complexity and also billing, we'd like to propose that code changes to user counts and how they are calculated, gets flagged for additional review (or some stronger review mechanism) and is communicated with the Support team (specifically in the #support_licensing-subscription slack channel).
Reasoning
We hope that early knowledge of changes will allow support to:
- better spot when a bug is present
- prepare for the change
- get familiar with the change and potentially detect any issues early and ask questions to ensure there is understanding
- allow more collaboration and knowledge sharing between dev and support