External user feedback on Timeboxes

What’s this issue all about?

Gaining insight and external feedback around our "Timebox" proposal.

Who is the target user of the feature?

What questions are you trying to answer?

  • Does this proposal match user expectation? Why or why not?
  • How would they use it, how would it improve their workflow?
  • Is this solution usable?
  • Would users prefer to create their own timeboxes, or can we start with a few reasonable defaults?
    • If they want to create custom timeboxes, why?
    • What types of timeboxes do users need (this could perhaps be a separate survey as well?)? This would help us provide defaults for a majority of users.
    • How many timeboxes would a user need?
  • What kind of configurability would users expect from different timeboxes (ie, would they expect to have different settings for a Sprint vs a Milestone)?

I did some quick internal research here, we could see how internal feedback compares to feedback from external users.

Questions from those interviews:

  • What is a milestone to you? Can you describe it?
  • Would you ever need multiple milestones attached to an issue? Why?
  • If you were given the option to create milestone types, do you have any idea what that would mean or what types you would
  • What is a Sprint, or a release or version? Are those milestones to you? Are they the same type of object?
  • What kind of reporting would you need to do on these timeboxes?
Core questions
  • Would this solution better support users in planning and tracking?

What hypotheses and/or assumptions do you have?

I am assuming we may have some interesting differences between the way internal and external users plan and think of milestones and timeboxes. I think that allowing for a few (~3) default timeboxes will elevate some challenges our users are having around milestone planning and tracking.

What decisions will you make based on the research findings?

This will help validate the work in gitlab#35290 (closed) with external users which will enable us to move forward with this. We are hesitant to start work on this without great understanding as it is quite big and will impact many areas of the product.

What's the latest milestone that the research will still be useful to you?

12.8

Progress

  • Katherine: Create a recrutiment request [Deadline: Fri Jan 24th] - #632 (closed)
  • Katherine: Create screener survey [Deadline: Weds Jan 29th]
    • Katherine, Emily: Send screener to GitLab First Look. [Deadline: Thurs Feb 6th]
  • Katherine, Emily: Schedule participants [Target Deadline: Mon Feb 10th]
  • Alexis: Finalize prototype [Deadline: Fri Feb 7th]
  • Alexis: Draft script for usability testing based on prototype [Deadline: Fri Feb 7th]
    • Katherine: Finalize testing script [Deadline: Fri Feb 7th]
  • Alexis, Katherine: Conduct usability testing sessions [Target Deadline: Fri Feb 14th]
    • User 1: Tuesday, Feb 11, 2020 11:30am PT - Notes
    • User 2: Monday, Feb 17, 2020 9:00am PT
    • User 3: Wednesday, Feb 19, 2020 10:00am PT
    • User 4: Monday, Feb 24, 2020 9:00am PT
    • User 5: Wednesday, Feb 24, 2020 11:00am PT
  • Katherine: Open an Incentive request issue using the template in the UX Research project [Deadline: Fri Feb 14th] - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ux-research/issues/706
  • Alexis, Holly, Katherine: Analyze notes and synthesize findings [Target Deadline: Fri March 6th]
  • Katherine: Document insights as issues in the Insights Repository [Deadline: Fri March 6th]

Links

Edited by Katherine Okpara