UX Coverage for Growth Team

What problem does this issue solve?

The Growth section is rapidly changing and PM ownership of product areas is not as clear cut as it is on typical products at GitLab. For this reason, some designers have been working with multiple PMs and on overlapping topics. Without clear UX ownership, this leads to some confusion over priorities, and increases the risk that we'll spin wheels doing redundant work. It's also much more satisfying for designers to have clear areas of ownership so they can build expertise and plan strategically.

Proposal

We’re proposing alignment with user experience flows rather than with PMs. Designers are not “assigned” to a particular PM, rather they are the first point of contact on UX related to that flow, with flexibility built in to even out the workload and ensure UX experts work on things they are subject matter experts on. This will allow us to cover all the areas of Growth, and it does not matter whether the work happens under a Growth group or the Fulfillment group.

We also will have designer partnerships for larger experience areas: Tim/Emily for Internal Tools and Portal IA and Matej/Kevin on Onboarding and Feature Discovery.

Next Steps

  • Gather feedback on this issue and finalize plan
  • Make handbook updates
  • Make any necessary changes to current meetings
  • Transition issues that make sense to transition over to another person
  • Try this for 2 milestones and do a retrospective to see how it worked

Quick View of Ownership

  • Sign-up Flow: Emily
  • Purchase Flow: Emily
  • Trial Flow: Kevin
  • Onboarding and First-time XP: Matej (lead), Kevin
  • Upgrade Flow:Matej
  • Add-on (CI): Matej
  • Renew Flow: Tim
  • True-up Flow: Tim
  • Internal Tools: Tim (lead), Emily
  • Billing/Account Management: Tim (lead), Emily

Details

Emily: mostly closely aligned with Acquisition

  • Main user flows: Sign-up, Buy
  • Emily works on things where users care about:
    • signing up as a new user
    • paying for their purchase (check-out)
    • managing their account and billing info
    • migrating to GitLab (this is potential work, not current work)
  • Other Areas of Responsibility
    • partner with Tim on account and billing efforts, strategic projects
    • be engaged in our relationship with marketing team

Kevin: mostly closely aligned with Conversion

  • Main user flow: Trial, Onboarding
  • Kevin works on things where users care about
    • trying GitLab
    • setting up self-managed trial (might end up working with Tim on this)
    • understanding pricing options and differences between plans (with help from marketing)
    • learning GitLab via onboarding activities in general and during trial)
  • Responsibilities
    • partner with Matej on onboarding (especially related to in-trial messaging and help)
    • be engaged in our relationship with marketing

Matej: mostly closely aligned with Expansion

  • Main user flows: Upgrade, Add-on, Onboarding, Increased Feature Usage
  • Matej works on things where users care about
    • understanding the difference between plans
    • getting the right plan for their needs
    • adding new users painlessly when time is right
    • getting a discount for spending more
  • Responsibilities
    • lead for onboarding (owns general onboarding strategy), in collaboration with Kevin
    • lead in other growth related strategic efforts (for example: in-app feedback)
    • POC on user management (in collaboration with manage section)

Tim: mostly closely aligned with Retention

  • Main user flows: Renew, True-up, GitLab Team Member Tasks
  • Tim works on things where users care about:
    • knowing where they stand in terms of billing
    • understanding who’s using their GitLab instance, what they are getting out of it
    • renewing their plan or license
    • billing administration - who on the team can pay bills
  • Responsibilities
    • lead in strategic efforts related to billing and account management (for example: eliminating dual portals for .com). Work with Emily on this
    • For now, lead on internal tools and license/version apps (this can change if/when work gets going)

Everyone is responsible for:

  • understanding self-hosted and .com flows and business models
  • understanding how .com and self-hosted customers differ
  • becoming familiar with the personas in areas of both billing/account management and also first time use and onboarding

Other Info

Growth meetings:

Matej:

  • Retention team weekly sync on Mondays
  • Growth weekly on Tuesdays
  • UX/Expansion/Retention Sync every 2 weeks on Thursdays
  • My biweekly 1:1 with Tim
  • My biweekly 1:1 with Mike

Kevin:

  • Acquisition team weekly sync on Mondays, and another on Wednesday (optional, I’m not always attending the one on Wednesday).
  • Conversion team weekly
  • Conversion Experiment Brainstorm weekly (Recently joined this meeting and not sure it if I’ll join it every weeks).
  • Growth weekly on Tuesdays.
  • UX/Acquisition/Conversion Sync every 2 weeks.
Edited by Jacki Bauer