FY21-Q1 OKR: Validate Roadmaps Maturity Level with Users => 0%
What’s this issue all about?
As part of gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com#6201 (closed), we are meant to validate the Roadmap features rating and the process from which we derive this rating with five users.
Hypothesis
We believe that enabling internal users similar to Parker to customize and craft their roadmap view for varying stakeholder's consumption will mature Roadmaps to a viable feature. We will know this hypothesis is valid when ~75% of the Product team is using GitLab roadmaps to:
- Communicate their team's progress or lack of progress toward a Milestone or an OKR.
- Communicate the priority of planned work and how it is tracking toward a specific larger goal.
- Understand items that may be at risk that require pivoting or more resources.
Improvements to be made and validated in &1998 (closed)
Who is the target user of the feature?
Internal GitLab users. Our assumption is that these users most closely match the persona of Parker.
What questions are you trying to answer?
From gitlab-design#894 (closed) - since the Roadmap feature is currently minimal
and has not moved in maturity recently, we should verify if it fits the following criteria with users:
- Definition: A minimal foundation so people can see where we're going and to validate customer need, and which does not need to be ready for customers to use in production.
JTBDs to be validated
We are currently undergoing some internal research understand Plan's top jobs. Once validated with external research, we will add the top jobs below.
JTBD Primary
When reviewing short-term or current goals with stakeholders, I want the roadmap to reflect the progress of my planned work items at a high level, so I can encourage confidence in my plans and validate that my team will deliver on expectations.
JTBD Secondary
When reviewing long-term goals with stakeholders, I want the roadmap to depict the priority of planned items and how they contribute to a business goals at a high level, so that I can set expectations on when work will be delivered and provide a single source of truth regarding dates and priorities.
Core questions and objectives
- Validate that this feature is actually
minimal
through the category maturity scorecard process- Validate users ability to complete the primary JTBD
- Validate users to complete the secondary JTBD
- Identify gaps in completing a user job with the current roadmap feature and opportunities for improvement of the feature.
- Validate our assumption that this is the path to moving up in category maturity &1998 (closed)
Additional questions
Exploratory
- When looking for a Portfolio or Project Management tool, what do these users expect to see from a Roadmapping feature and why? Starting big here is probably good, then drilling down into specifics of what a users expects.
- What information or metrics are most important to users?
- How do users determine the progress of items in their roadmap (or expect to)?
- Is this by weight completed, issues completed, time estimate, something else?
- Where would they expect to see this progress information displayed?
- What other tools or processes are they using outside of Gitlab for roadmapping?
- How granular does the Roadmap need to be (Portfolio vs Project vs Epic) and why?
- Do different levels of roadmaps (Portfolio vs Project vs Epic) need to present different information and why?
- What interactions do they expect to be able to have with the Roadmap (drag and drop, click and drag, etc). How do these speed up or improve their workflow?
- What viewing or export options are needed to get a snapshot of the roadmap out for their stakeholders? What do their stakeholders care about?
Assessment of current state
- Do users understand why some items have no start or end date and the representation of this on the roadmap?
- Roadmap bars- What would users expect:
- On hover?
- On click?
- Is there anything else users would expect to see on these bars?
- How would users expect to interact with these bars?
- Epic titles- What would users expect:
- On hover?
- On click?
- Is there anything else users would expect to see here?
- Does seeing the date range here make sense to users or would they expect it somewhere else?
- Is the way we allow users to navigate date ranges what they expect?
- Is dragging the roadmap horizontally to view more expected? How else would users prefer to do this, or is this usable?
- Does slicing the roadmap by quarter, month, or week make sense? What else would be expected?
- Would users expect to be able to "brush and zoom" through the date range instead?
- Do users understand what date today is on the roadmap and how that is represented and oriented? Is that what they would expect?
- When would a user want to search open vs closed epics, vs all? What would be the sensible default here?
- Why would a user be filtering or searching through epics in the roadmap?
- Is there another way they would expect to do this?
- How else would users expect these epics to be grouped in their roadmap?
What assumptions do you have?
- That roadmaps may not be quite as
minimal
as we are assuming. - To have a compelling Portfolio Management offering that enables us to displace JIRA and compete with other vendors in the space and we need to have robust roadmap capabilities. More understanding of user job and more fulfillment of all these job steps will help us accomplish our roadmap vision and get us on track toward
loveable
.
What decisions will you make based on the research findings?
The research will help us to validate/invalidate our assumptions on Portfolio Management and directly inform our short and longterm roadmap for ...roadmaps :)
What's the latest milestone that the research will still be useful to you?
This is current OKR related and due by end of Q1.
Progress Checklist
-
Finalize JTBDs -
EOD April 10: 5 internal interviews scheduled -
Draft testing script (scenarios tied to JTBD) -
Finalize testing environment (which group and roadmap to use) -
Due April 10, 2020:Finalize testing script (scenarios have been discussed and are viable, everything can be completed on testing environment) -
Due April 17, 2020 (but the earlier the better): Alexis, Katherine, Keanon (or any combo of) complete 5 sessions -
Due April 28, 2020:Synthesize findings -
Due April 30, 2020:Category maturity scorecard complete, issue is created