More Accessible and Conventional Epics
Problem to solve
Revisit our Epic feature implementation with the goal of increasing Epic feature use and value by making epics more accessible, conventional and intuitive. Suggest research/discovery initiative focused on competitive analysis to identify industry functionality, workflow and UX conventions. From there, create issues to make incremental changes towards those conventions wherever possible. We should only stray from those conventions with strategic intent.
Our product strategy is to get users migrating from competitive tools to ours, and embracing industry conventions gives those users a comparable and familiar (intuitive) experience that improves on-boarding and adoption while reducing attrition.
From a design, UX and customer perspective, the boring and efficient thing to do is follow industry conventions, unless we have disruptive innovation opportunities.
Intended users
All users who would benefit from epic use, which includes most personas.
Epics are at the heart of modern development, so getting them right is key to our success.
Further details
- Supports our goal of breadth, in that it will help us attract non-devs.
- Supports developers, by making epics easier to leverage.
- The boring and efficient thing to do is follow industry conventions.
Proposal
- Competitive analysis
- User research (existing and or new)
- Initial thoughts, based on my own experience in competitor tools, are:
- Don't hide epic create at gitlab.org; instead allow me to create epics from anywhere (like issues)
- When I'm in an epic, let me create a sub-epic without having to go back to the epic list page
- Let me search for epics by keyword from anywhere vs. having to find them in epic list page, copy URL and then paste (that friction likely discourage use)
- When I'm in an issue that doesn't have an epic assigned, let me search–assign an epic to it (like you search–assign labels) OR create an epic from there.
Permissions and Security
Documentation
Testing
What does success look like, and how can we measure that?
Links / references
@clenneville @sarahod @tauriedavis @pedroms