RFC: Update project management process to use a hybrid of Kanban
Overview
This is a change that would apply across groupacquisition ~"group::conversion" ~"group::telemetry".
With the recent changes in gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com!50745 (merged) to have Milestone planning with a continuous flow, I'd like our teams to also evaluate moving towards a hybrid of Kanban.
Project Management Options
1. Milestone planning with start stop
Overview
- We previously used this in 12.9, 12.10, 13.0 across Acquisition, Conversion, Telemetry
- We use a milestone planning issue to schedule work
- Each milestone has a clear start and stop
Benefits
- Clear outline of priorities
- Clear outline of available capacity
Drawbacks
- We frequently encounter a planning bottleneck at the beginning of milestones
- Milestones rarely start on time
- Issues regularly overflow into the next milestone
- Difficult to use with shifting requirements
2. Milestone planning with continuous flow
Overview
- We are currently using this 13.1. This was introduced in gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com!50745 (merged)
- We use a milestone planning issue to organize work
- workflowplanning breakdown with estimates are done continuously in an async manner
- There's a continuous flow as issues skip workflowscheduling and are moved directly into workflowready for development
- We have engineering initiatives to emphasize picking up workflowready for development issues gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com!50237 (diffs)
Benefits
- Clear outline of priorities
- Clear outline of available capacity
- No planning bottleneck
Drawbacks
- Difficult to use with shifting requirements
- Issues will still overflow into the next milestone
3. Kanban hybrid
Overview
- I'd like us to transition to this in 13.1 / 13.2
- We continue using our existing Workflow (Kanban) boards
- We try to simplify the amount of stages.
- We only work off of the Workflow board and this acts as our single source of truth
- Milestones and labels are applied for reporting purposes.
- workflowplanning breakdown with estimates are done continuously in an async manner
- Priorities are assigned on each issue
- workflowready for development always has issues available for pick up
- We have weekly refinement to ensure Workflow board is up to date (Async)
- We have monthly roadmap planning sessions
Benefits
- More flexibility for shifting requirements
- Workflow board is always up to date
- We can still measure velocity
- We need to eventually move towards this if we want to run weekly experiments as a growth team.
Drawbacks
- Long term planning is more difficult. We will need to ensure we can still provide a level of predictability during monthly roadmap planning sessions
Next Steps
-
Outline project management options -
Open for comment -
Update project management process
Edited by Jerome Z Ng