Instance-level activity overview - Design Exploration

Problem

We need to start addressing 2 key challenges enterprise GitLab customers face:

  1. GitLab ROI & Value - Backward-looking justification - Understanding and demonstrating the ROI of GitLab by understanding project, group & instance-level activity (see GitHub Enterprise).
  2. Transformation progress & benchmarking - Forward-looking guidance - Understanding progress of DevOps transformation and how their company compares to others in similar industries, markets, etc. Getting advice on how they can further their progress.

We plan to start by tackling 1, with 2 as the end goal.

Ultimately, we are helping our users understand and communicate how their DevOps effort metrics are impacting business value and product management (customer) value. To do this we must help them understand how to define, measure, and track business value from different points of view — and ensure that developers deliver meaningful value for the business and its customers.

Target users

Research

See DevOps Score - Problem Validation #605

From this customer report and this one (pulling data from the API into a CSV), we can see that users are initially looking to get a broad instance-level overview which then breaks down into groups.

Jobs to be done

For simplicity, we can start by focusing on customers who are looking to justify...

  • Upgrading from CE >> EE, Premium >> ultimate, etc
  • Renewing current plan
# Situation Motivation Outcomes
1 When I am justifying the purchase/renewal of GitLab to my business stakeholders I want to know what people are using our GitLab Instance for so that I can understand where and how it is being utilised
2 When I am justifying the purchase/renewal of GitLab to my business stakeholders I want to know how people are using GitLab Groups so that I can understand which teams are using it most effectively
2 When I am justifying the purchase/renewal of GitLab to my business stakeholders I want to see a trend of instance-level activity so that I can spot positive/negative progress

Solution

Opportunities

Design Considerations

  • Shareable/exportable format with stakeholders
  • Competitive between groups/teams
  • Value-perspectives are different based on the type of stakeholder
  • Forward-looking guidance (e.g. Feature adoption and onboarding)

Approach

Timescale: ~ 2/3 weeks

  • Review current requests from customers around this topic
  • Create research plan & discussion guide
  • Explore & prototype potential solutions
  • Recruit customers from CAB for research discussion
  • Run research Problem/Solution validation
  • Iterate on vision and create MVC for execution in ideally 12.8

Further information

Edited by Brandon Labuschagne