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Revise Optimize categories

Objective

Review the Optimize categories and identify opportunities to consolidate.

Problems to solve

  1. Depth over breadth - The product team has shifted to a focus on depth in core product areas. We have barely scratched the surface with the value that can be created in Value Stream Management and DevOps Reports. These two categories will lay the foundation for a high-level, centralized view of the end-to-end operations for product organizations, allowing the target personas of executive, VP, and director to quickly identify problems and evaluate the value of investments and deliverables. There is tremendous opportunity to be a market leader in these two categories. To be successful, we need to focus on depth, and narrow down the personas that we are attempting to service.

  2. Not easy to get an overall view - Many of the analytics in GitLab today are specific to a stage. Customers don't get an overall view to present to senior leadership. groupoptimize is uniquely positioned to provide an overall view because they are not aligned to a specific DevOps stage. It makes sense for each stage to build out metrics specific to their area, especially because they have the subject matter expertise on which metrics are useful, while groupoptimize focuses on the full picture.

  3. Large number of categories for a small team - groupoptimize is currently responsible for five product categories. This is a large number of categories for a small team (2 x FE, 2 x BE (plus one on leave for the first half of 2021). We have already determined that we only have capacity to focus on two of the categories in 2021: Value Stream Management and DevOps Reports.

  4. Lack of vision - The three other categories (planning analytics, code analytics, and insights) do not have a detailed vision or maturity plan and would be easy to remove, absorb into Value Stream Management or DevOps Reports, or hand off to a stage-specific team.

Category Maturity Priority Direction page Maturity plan
Code Analytics Minimal Low Minimal Dates but no plan
Planning Analytics Minimal Low Minimal No
Insights Viable Low No Stagnant
Value Stream Management Minimal High Yes In progress
DevOps Reports Minimal High Yes, updates in progress In progress

Proposal

Reduce the categories to two by doing the following:

  1. Fold the Code Analytics category into Value Stream Management and DevOps Reports

    The code analytics category is described as a deep dive into the Code stage of Value Stream Analytics to find bottlenecks. Category:Value Stream Management already provides high-level insight into the time that workflow items spend in the code stage relative to other stages of the software development life cycle and allows users to drill in and identify bottlenecks. Value Stream Analytics will link to other key parts of the UI so that users can dive deeper. Additionally, DevOps Reports will show usage metrics for features in the Create stage and how usage correlates to performance.

    There is an open discussion about whether Code Analytics moves to Create or is absorbed into VSM and DevOps Reports. This depends on whether Create has a vision and customer demand for more metrics.

  2. Hand off Planning Analytics to devopsplan

    Similar to Code Analytics, the planning analytics category is described as a deep dive into the Plan stage of Value Stream Analytics to find bottlenecks. Category:Value Stream Management provides high-level insight into the time spent on planning, and a sortable list of issues in the plan stage so that users can identify lagging work. devopsplan has subject matter expertise on the detailed analytics specific to the Plan stage that would be most valuable to users, as outlined by @gweaver.

  3. Fold Insights into Value Stream Management and DevOps Reports

    Insights does not have a direction page. The maturity plan and direction are unknown. The Insights page in the GitLab UI provides a breakdown of the types of issues that are being worked on and ability to create custom dashboards. The roadmap for Category:Value Stream Management and DevOps Reports includes some customizability and a breakdown of work by issue type. As these two categories continue to evolve, they can incorporate the value provided through the Insights page.

  4. Keep Value Stream Management and DevOps Reports and drive maturity in these categories

Edited by Larissa Lane