Feedback for Optimize FY22 direction
TL;DR
In FY21, the Optimize team built out a series of MVCs that provide Engineering Directors with insights into the adoption of GitLab and DevOps practices across their organization (DevOps Reports), as well as analytics for Engineering and Product Managers to understand the efficiency of their value stream (VSA).
This issue roughly summarises our aspirations and approach for maturing Value Stream Analytics and DevOps reports in FY22 and beyond.
- Optimize FY22 direction - video summary (15m)
- Value stream framework - video summary (9m)
- Full planning meeting - video (1.5h)
- Figma file \ Figma prototype
- Mural
Feedback
Please watch the video summary (15m). We would love to get your feedback:
- Direction: What do you think about our approach? Do you foresee any other obstacles?
- JTBD & personas: Is there any overlap with your team? Do these seem relevant or accurate to you?
- Design - Do you see these features as valuable? What is extraneous? How might you want to use this at GitLab if dogfooding? What would be a useful MVC? Where do you foresee opportunities for collaboration?
Direction
Objectives
- Increase Optimize group monthly active users (GMAU)
- Move VSA category maturity → viable
- Move DevOps reports category maturity → viable
- Create connections/workflows between DevOps Reports and Value Stream Analytics so that users can understand the relationship between DevOps maturity and cycle time
- Increase adoption of all GitLab stages by highlighting the potential for speed and quality gains
Approach
- Building features that map to the most popular categories in the product
- Building features at the value stream layer first (which typically will map to group-level)
- Making features dogfoodable
- Using personas & JTBD for category focus
- Collaborate with related stage groups around features and persona needs
Obstacles/risks
- Maintaining database performance with the data we are working on
- Broader initiatives such as
- Groups & projects consolidation: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/architecture/tasks/-/issues/7
- Instance/workspace-level features: gitlab-org&4257 (closed)
- Custom workflows: gitlab-org/gitlab#2059
- Limited engineering capacity in the team
- Onboarding and educating users about value stream (nascent category)
Value stream framework
- Watch this video to get a better understanding of what a Value Stream is, what you could do with it, and why we have gone with this direction/approach.
Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD)
JTBD 1: Value stream delivery
As a... development team lead, When I am... tactically moving work items through my value stream, I want to... quickly identify stagnant and outlier work items in real-time, so that... my team can unblock them and improve our flow metrics.
Potential features
- Visualising the value stream
- Value stream feature parity at project-level
- Issue-only value stream
- MR-only value stream
- Custom stage metrics
- Time in stage benchmarking
- Identify, sort & filter outlier workflow items
- More stage start/end events & rules
JTBD 2: Value stream optimization
As an... engineering manager, When I am... strategically optimizing my value stream and its stages, I want to... understand the trends around my team's and other teams' development and CI/CD activities, so that... I can measure success, experiment with new practices and learn from other successful teams.
Potential features
- DORA metrics - define, add & educate
- CREATE-focused features & user flows
- VERIFY-focused features & user flows
- RELEASE-focused features & user flows
JTBD 3: DevOps Reports
As an... engineering director, When I... have multiple teams in my organisation adopting new DevOps practices, I want to... track the impact of any changes to our development and CI/CD activities, so that... I can understand ROI and report to leadership on the value of our DevOps transformation.
Potential features
- DORA metrics - define, add & educate
- DevOps adoption - CREATE, VERIFY & RELEASE features