Stage-specific metrics for VSA
Overview
VSA currently shows five metrics at the top of the page: Lead time, Cycle time, New issues, Deploys, Deployment Frequency. The same five metrics are displayed regardless of which stage the user is viewing. Once an Overview stage is created, these five metrics can live in that stage because they provide an overview of a value stream and are not necessarily relevant to a specific stage in the value stream. We can then provide a dashboard of meaningful metrics specific to each stage. For example, in the Plan stage we could display weight per user, time spent, time estimated, time from issue created to issue scheduled, etc.
"Meaningful metrics" may be slightly different for different users depending on what their organization cares about measuring.
Problem to solve
As an Engineering Director, I want to monitor key metrics relating to software delivery to help identify where we can become more streamlined. I would like to see GitLab-recommended metrics but my organization also has its own unique set of metrics that are important to us.
Proposal
- Create a set of four metrics per default stage that are particularly relevant to the stage. When using default stages, we will default to the four metrics that we believe are important for that stage, but give users the flexibility to switch these out for other metrics from an available list.
- While it is okay for GitLab to be opinionated and provide industry standard metrics in the Overview and default stages, we should allow some flexibility for users to select metrics to display for each stage. For example, we could have a space to display up to four key metrics per stage and allow users to select from a short list of available metrics. We could also provide that option for custom stages. For example, let's say we determine 20-30 key metrics that are important measures of performance throughout the entire SDLC (many of these metrics likely already exist in GitLab, but are currently spread out across different pages). When creating a custom stage, users could select four metrics from the 20-30 available metrics.
- Consider each of the metrics could have an associated trend over time graph that automatically gets displayed on the page when the metric is added to the stage.
Intended users
User experience goal
- Users can see a set of four default metrics per default stage without the need for configuration
- Users can use the UI to define which metrics to show for each stage in their value stream.
- Users can fetch this data through an API so they can visualize it in their tool of choice
- Users can see how the metrics are trending over time
Further details
Permissions and Security
Reporter