Verify: How to name a new feature

What’s this issue all about?

Trying to find out how to name a new keyword in GitLab CI/CD that would allow users to build their code every time another project (one they depend on say) is built or released.

What questions are you trying to answer?

Details around the issue at hand are here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/9045, with a thread on the naming here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/9045#note_145136331.

But, basically the question is:

If you’re building an application that relies on another project or library, which of these keywords best identifies that relationship in your application’s pipeline:

  • triggered-by:
  • watch:
  • upstream:
  • Other (please specify)

What assumptions do you have?

That triggered-by is the worst/least descriptive of the three, and there will be strong opinions about watch vs. upstream

What decisions will you make based on the research findings?

Will take the results as the name for this feature (for now at least...MVC 😉)

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

Honestly, this is super late as we want to ship this in %11.9... 🤦🏻 . But I'm hoping we can do a "quick survey" as we did for the closed icon...and then follow up with more formal research around the entire "refactor" of multiple pipelines we have planned for %12.0

Results

  • 38 out of 91 users (42%) selected Upstream as the most likely name used to identify a relationship in their application's pipeline.
  • The most common reason for choosing Upstream was because it is a familiar term already used in different companies/projects, and it's common nomenclature from a Git perspective.
  • 25 participants (27%) selected they would use a different name for this feature other than the ones we provided. The majority of "Other" answers were terms related to dependency (other variations like depends-on, dependent-on, linked dependency and depends). 17 out of 25 participants suggested the term Dependency. Their reason for suggesting this option was that because the relationship between projects is dependent.

Progress

  • Create test in Usability Hub [Deadline: Mon March 4th]
  • Send test to test segment of GitLab First Look users [Deadline: Mon March 4th]
  • Send test to full segment of GitLab First Look users [Deadline: Tues March 5th]
  • Review results and share update in issue [Deadline: Fri March 8th]
Edited by Katherine Okpara