Align Roadmap and Epic Usage / Pricing Tier To Be More Consistent With Buyer Usage
Problem to solve
Right now, Epics and roadmaps are locked to Ultimate. This is not congruent with our four pricing tiers (https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ceo/pricing/). It feels a bit naive to assume that a Manager would not pay for a project level epic, or a Director for a simplified group level epic. Epics are a core construct of Project Management AND Portfolio Management and we need to tailor the epic and roadmap functionality to better suit each type of buyer.
Intended users
Managers
Managers definitely care about prioritization, planning, and maintaining some sort of roadmap. They likely will need to track their team's progress on some sort of timeline (roadmap), as well as provide a way to group issues on a given project into buckets of work (epic).
Directors
Directors coordinate projects/products across many different teams and would pay for the ability to roll up project level epics on the group level.
Executives
Executives need a high level few of all the different initiatives in flight within their organization. They will most certainly pay for advanced reporting, the ability to easily surface problem areas across a company level roadmap, visualize dependencies across groups, etc.
Further details
Market Feedback
That massive premium bothers me too. I don't mind paying for those premium features, but as a small company (less than 20 employees) the cost is not justifiable. We already use GitLab's community edition as a self-hosted package combined with MatterMost, and we love it. We are not using its issue tracker, only the git repository hosting and integration with MatterMost. However, having to go to enterprise tier just to get epics is not an option for us. I really wish GitLab would price their tiers more appropriately for small businesses. Hacker News Comment
But the cost would be an issue for us: Bronze $4/user/month is ok, but $19/user/month is prohibitive for us. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/7781
As a purchaser who currently uses Jira and was considering using Gitlab, I can't believe something basic as Epics are being made an "Ultimate" feature. It's simply a logical group of issues and should be in CE. Portfolio management should be an enterprise or ultimate feature, but epics? Geez. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/3254#note_47819284
Proposal
Project Level Epics & Roadmap GitLab Starter
- Projects would get project level epics.
- Project level epics could only be accessed from within a project and can only contain issues within that project.
- Project epics cannot be multilevel.
- Projects would get a basic roadmap to view epics within that project only.
- As the roadmap becomes more feature rich, there will naturally be some capabilities that will not fall within this pricing tier. (i.e. dependency modeling, advanced reporting, etc.)
When I'm conducting roadmap planning and backlog grooming, I want to group issues within a project into similar buckets, so that I can easily track longer term features.
Market: Several competitors, such as Jira ($7) and Pivotal Tracker ($12.50), offer Epics to this type of Buyer for a similar price range. It is slightly more expensive than Starter ($4), but significantly less expensive than Premium ($19).
Single Level Group Epics & Roadmap GitLab Premium
- Within this tier, group level epics cannot include other group level epics (no nesting of epics at the group level).
- Epics can only include single tier Project epics and project issues
- Project level epics can only belong to one single group level epic.
- No "Epic Tree" view within an epic.
- Groups would get a basic roadmap to view epics within that group only.
- As the Roadmap becomes more feature rich, there will naturally be some capabilities that will not fall within this pricing tier. (i.e. dependency modeling, advanced reporting, etc.)
When I'm trying to coordinate strategy across many project teams, I want to see project level initiatives grouped together and viewable on some sort of timeline, so that I can track progress and understand what is coming up and what is currently in flight.
Multi level Group Epics & Roadmaps GitLab Ultimate
- Basically what it is now.
- As the Roadmap becomes more feature rich, all capabilities will be available to this tier.
When I'm trying to understand product development across the Company, I want to create multi-level constructs that reflects more complex dependencies across departments, so that I can ensure we are staying on track and coordinating effectively.
Permissions and Security
- A lot of implications here.
Documentation
- Most certainly will require documentation updates.
Testing
- I'm assuming lots of risks :)
What does success look like, and how can we measure that?
• Uptick in Starter and Premium subscriptions. (Sync with Growth for measurements) • Feedback from sales that this enables them to more easily sell GitLab's planning functionality to the appropriate buyer.
What is the type of buyer?
Managers, Directors, and Executives will all use Epics in a slightly different way.