Improve the organization of repository and merge request policy settings
This an actionable insight from the Code Review FY21-Q2 Category Maturity Scorecard research (insight).
This is very tightly related to Explore new placement of the Merge Request approval settings.
What
Users struggle with finding the settings to enforce code owner approvals, because they live in Repository. Whereas the “normal” approvals settings live in General. The main problem has to do with how we organize the policy settings for the Repository (protected branches) and for Merge Requests (approval rules/code owners).
However, the biggest issue seems to do with the separation of Approvals and Code Owner approval settings (Protected Branches also play a role here). Participants thought that all approval settings would be in the same place.
Why
Today this separation is impairing feature discoverability and frustrating users in finding the settings.
How
To improve the experience across all repository and merge request policy settings, we need to take a step back and re-evaluate the current structure. A possible plan to accomplish that:
- Learn from what competitors are doing (good and not so good), to see if there are approaches worth adopting to GitLab's reality.
- Research how users organize these settings in their mind. For example, we could do a card sorting exercise and interviews.
- Design some possible solutions and validate with users.