Auto DevOps as part of Integrated DevOps ???
Auto DevOps is a great vision for the product, but does the term resonate with our target market, and focus us on the right developments? The "DevOps" part is strong, new (for us), and modern. DevOps leapfrogs all the discussion of ALM vs SDLC.
But is "auto" really what differentiates us and makes us awesome? The auto part here refers to having things enabled by default, which is great for onboarding, but it's not as significant for ongoing projects or the intermediate/advanced user. Whereas "integrated" is awesome across the board, and is truly, sustainably differentiated. When sales asks me for our biggest differentiators, I always answer that it's our integration.
When we sell someone our DevOps vision vs GitHub+Jenkins+DataDog or whatever, how much will "Auto DevOps" resonate vs "Integrated DevOps"? I think the latter might be a stronger USP (unique selling proposition). All of the features listed under Auto DevOps could likely be rebranded with "integrated". More specifically, we could even continue working on the "auto" part of a lot of these issues as improving onboarding is a challenge and opportunity for us. Auto CI is still the most important thing to work on next. But at the level of "what is GitLab?", we should be aiming for something more. Maybe Auto DevOps is a feature or a focus for 3 months, but Integrated DevOps is our vision that will last 12+ months, and be our main marketing message. Maybe even our identity; like our tagline or the main topic of about.gitlab.com. Evolving from being known as "open-source GitHub" or a version control company, to being known as an "integrated DevOps solution".
So maybe it's not even so much about "vs", but "we're the first, best integrated DevOps solution, and we're working on Auto DevOps to bring it to everyone".
One downside is that "integrated" can still be interpreted as integrating best-of-breed third party products. "All-in-one" conveys something more accurate, but isn't great wording. Is there something even better?
This is an evolution of our idea-to-production messaging and our Master Plan. We should align development, sales, and marketing ASAP on this as it will drive our marketing messages and development goals for the next 9+ months. Words matter. If we focus on "auto", we might consciously or subconsciously focus on that aspect, and miss the bigger opportunity.