Add Product Designer DRIs to the release post item template
👇 Challenge
- Product Designers currently aren't tagged in release post merge requests that PMs generate to create a release post.
- Product Designer should ideally be giving feedback and support to PMs and helping craft the release post items.
🎯 Insights from GitLab designers
As a product designer, I would like to mentioned directly on each release post. Even though some posts may be more relevant than others to me, I would still like to understand / stay in the loop of what we are putting out into the world, and how we are "selling it", before it gets posted.
I used to be part of the monthly direction page updates. This meant I always knew what's coming next and what's changed in priority. I was also included in every release post draft as a reviewer. This is difficult to replicate with other PMs because they don’t have a/same cadence for these updates. I'd love seeing this become a standard so we can proactively strengthen collaboration between UX/PM!
In recent release post item MRs I was manually added under
Engineer(s)
and it was helpful to track the evolution of the document and step in if needed. It's also clear who is the Designer to ping if needed.
I used to be pinged in every release post and category page update when I was part of Release Management (RIP). This is difficult to replicate with other PMs because they don’t have a/same cadence for these updates.
I'd like to be “informed without asking to be informed”.
My PM pings everyone in our group channel asking for feedback but agree being pinged in the MR would be more ideal!
Release posts are a part of how we show ourselves to the market. Although it may not be “UX” it gives a designer a better understanding of what your team is doing in general
Even if I don't have anything to contribute for that specific release post, it's great to be aware of what my team is releasing to our customers. It would provide additional context for the designs I'm working on.
🚫 Risks:
Designers could feel overwhelmed by pings, or feel they don't need to provide feedback on an item.
🚀 Solutions:
Designers can just remove todo, assignment, or ignore if it doesn’t seem valuable. We should keep in mind that small changes could need product design feedback as well.
👇 Proposal
Add Product Designers DRI(s) to the release post item template and process in the handbook.
MVC
- Product Designers listed in the reviewers section of the MR to be updated manually
- Optional step for designers to review and approve
- Product Designers are mentioned in the handbook as part of this process
Future scope
- The Product Designer DRI is added automatically when using Release Post Generator