Release Stage Research - Persona Interviews - Release Manager & Developers - August 2019

Release Managers - Enterprise

User 2 - Alison

  • 17 years in IT, 4 years in current position
  • Senior Technical Program Manager / Release Manager at Disney's DTCI group
  • Top tasks: Orchestrate and initiate releases, create release process, working on release modernization
  • They are currently migrating to GitLab from GitHub to prepare for CI/CD

User 12 - Bastien

  • 3 years in current position (he's a consultant)
  • Consultant - Structural Engineer
  • Top tasks: CI jobs, maintaining and creating all pipelines in GitLab, creating environments, lead and help the development team
  • Uses GitLab for source code management, reviewing merge requests, CI jobs and development, unit tests, interface testing. (they only have the Core version and he misses having merge request approval that he had at a prior job)

User 13 - Johan

  • 3 yrs in current position, first job out of college
  • Senior Software Engineer, however rotates in Release Manager role with other coworkers
  • Top Tasks: Leads Quality Engineering team (maintains their backlog, works on stories, plans sprints), Develops on their build system, Rotates as Release Manager
  • Uses Gitlab to host all source code and auxilary builds which use pipelines (they build the main product in Bamboo and they can't get off of it)

User 16 - Jason

  • 20+ years in IT
  • Build Engineer
  • Top tasks: Working on Millennial Falcon project. Runs all pipelines and build systems for it and ensures all builds push to the attraction
  • Uses GitLab for pipeline builds (new ones not in Jenkins)

User 17 - Mike

  • 3 yrs in current role, 7 years in IT
  • Senior Cloud Engineer
  • Top Tasks: Architect cloud based solutions, optimizing for cost to make sure solutions are scalable, monitoring solutions
  • Uses GitLab for code repository, CI, packaging, issues, merge requests, peer review process

User 20 - Jordan

  • 4 years in IT, 1 year in current role
  • Software Engineer
  • Top Tasks: Responsible for different phases of testing, Environment readiness, allocations, scheduling and deployment
  • Doesn't use GitLab. They use TFS for pipelines, etc.

Release Managers - SMB

User 1 - Max

  • 9 years in IT, 5.5 years in current position
  • Senior Engineer at Substrakhealth (UK health startup)
  • Top tasks: Write code, manage DevOps team, manage release management and CD systems
  • Uses GitLab for automation. 3 months ago they moved to Enterprise and "went all in" on GitLab, which means they are using it more and more

User 5 - Pavel

  • 6 years in current position, 18 years in IT
  • Chief Operating Officer in a 6 people company
  • Top tasks: Take care of operations, Ruby and Java developer
  • Uses GitLab as a main code repository for a while now. All their builds go through GitLab (CI/CD).

User 6 - Pedro

  • 4 years in current position, 8 years in IT
  • Has his own company and also works as a technology evangelist
  • Top Tasks: Everything related to automation, software engineering and architecture
  • Uses GitLab for CI/CD pipelines but not DevOps

User 7 - Pablo

  • 5+ years in current role, 20+ years in IT
  • Software Delivery Manager for US-based projects
  • Top Tasks: Manage all US projects, involved in some technical parts of the projects from start to go-live
  • Uses GitLab for Issue tracking, Source Control, CI/CD, Docker Registry

User 8 - Thomas

  • 8 months in current role, 6+ years in IT
  • Backend Team Lead
  • Top tasks: Managing people, managing releases, coding, figuring out the next features by working with different business units
  • Uses GitLab for code hosting, Git, CI/CD to run builds, manage releases. They'd like to use more of the project management tools, but they are on the free version.

User 10 - Pavel N

  • 5 years in current role, 10 years in IT
  • CEO of the company
  • Top Tasks: Talks with clients and closes deals, coding the back end, ensuring releases are smooth
  • Uses GitLab for code repository, git repository, docker registry. Not using the Issue Tracker because it's too technical and they have non-technical users (marketing)

User 14 - Rob

  • Founding Partner of Notch8 but he wears a lot of hats
  • Top Tasks: Finalizing client proposals, managing the dev team, Dev tasks (breaks big software into smaller tasks for others to work on and does the hardest parts himself)
  • Uses GitLab for all code repository hosting, docker registry, CI pipelines, boards (shut Trello down!)

User 21 - Akmyrat

  • 5 years in IT, 2.5 years in current role
  • Release Manager for the service side of the web application
  • Top Tasks: Make sure releases release on time, communicate status of releases to the business, ensure bugs are fixed

Developers - Enterprise

User

Developers - SMB

User 3 - Omar

  • Currently a student
  • Interning at Facebook and working part-time on a project for which he uses GitLab
  • Top tasks: Continuous Delivery and integrating the front end with the back end
  • Uses the GitLab's Boards, Issue Tracker (moved from Trello), version control system.

User 4 - Aleksandr

  • 1+ yr in his current role
  • Integration Team Lead
  • Top tasks: Develop internal applications and parts of the system, responsible for the software CI/CD pipelines
  • Uses GitLab as a code repository

User 9 - Crt

  • 4 yrs in current role
  • Senior Embedded Software Developer
  • Top Tasks: Develop new features, participating in code reviews
  • Uses Gitlab for CD and release management, internal issue tracking

User 11 - Kendall

  • Sr Systems Analyst
  • Top Tasks: Ensure website is up at all times, database migration for new VMs, ensure correct deployment for all enterprise systems (LMS, website, Moodle, etc), compiling custom PHP.
  • Uses GitLab to host all code for all projects (as much as possible), Issue Tracker, CI

User 15 - Calum

  • 3.5 yrs in current role, 22 years in IT
  • Software Engineer
  • Top Tasks: Codes the road traffic simulation software, manages their GitLab instance (self-hosted Core)
  • Uses GitLab for source control, code review, issues, and CI

User 18 - Joakim

  • 4 yrs in current role, 12 yrs in IT
  • System Architect
  • Top Tasks: Implement features, CI/CD processes, manage their GL instance and how they use it, planning what needs to be done next for the product
  • Uses GitLab for version control, CI, issues, containers

User 19 - Benedikt

  • 5 yrs in current role, 10 yrs in IT
  • Software Developer, Front End and Back End
  • Top Tasks: Development, testing, deploying
  • Uses GitLab for scrum teams, scrum board, CI/CD, GIT repository, build, deploy
Edited by Lorie Whitaker