Validation: Customers are not deploying using GitLab
Problem Statement
A precursor to deploying with GitLab is using Environments. We are unsure how users currently perceive environments and are looking to make environments a part of their GitLab workflow.
In ux-research#625 (closed), we identified with our Environments survey three areas to invest in. People would be more inclined to use GitLab environments if we had better:
- rollback support
- more advanced secrets management/variable management
- better sharing across groups and projects
The survey also debunked some assumptions we held about environments including confidence in what environments are meant to be and security. About 10% of the respondents did not know what environments were, so there is something to be said about documentation and discoverability of the features/functionality. The majority of users in this survey believed environments were secure, flexible, and supported multi-cloud deployments.
Reach
6.0 - we know if we can support better use of Environments people are more likely to deploy with GL, making their adoption of the Release Stage higher.
Impact
3.0 = Massive impact
We can support users most challenging use cases and eventually disrupt the tools currently managing their deployments like Chef, Ansible, Jenkins and others.
Confidence
I am 100% certain that multiple tools in a toolchain can be a problem and our users feel that pain. Although, I would say when framed in light of the customer's perception of how problematic is it to not deploy with GitLab they are likely to say they are happy with their current solution because of the technical expertise they have in house - making this a medium-low confidence.
Effort
I would expect this effort to take 2.5-4 months to prototype, validate and build a solution.