[VSA] Need alternative start event for "code" stage when not using GitLab issues
Problem to solve
Many people use JIRA for issues and GitLab for merge requests. In these cases, it is difficult to measure the "code" stage in Value Stream Analytics. (Defined as: "the median time between pushing a first commit (previous stage) and creating a merge request (MR) related to that commit.") The problem is that it is not clear in GitLab which MRs are associated with which JIRA issues.
Proposal
Create a new "start" event: "Merge request first commit". This should be the timestamp that the first commit in the MR was created (we can use merge_request_metrics.first_commit_at
). Although this excludes the time that the developer spent creating the changes captured in the commit, this event could serve as a rough proxy for the beginning of the "code" stage. This would be paired with the "Merge request merged" end event.