**TL;DR** Major releases are a significant milestone for GitLab every year, there's a lot we can do to improve the experience for customers. As the surface of the product expands, deprecations can be especially painful to deal with. We should target deprecations and breaking changes as a priority. ## Context - **Next Major Release Date: 2025-05-15** - **Cutoff for all deprecation announcements: 2024-02-20** - [GitLab Releases Page](https://about.gitlab.com/releases/) At the time of writing (`2024-05-15`) there are ~`30` deprecations that customers must manage through, before we have released 17.0. There is also already a breaking change for `19.0`. Our policies, processes and procedures need to be overhauled in order to improve the efficacy of our customer outreach and make upgrading to new alternatives from deprecated features a delightful experience. ## Proposal - Repurpose the [17.0 Major Release Working group into a general Major Release working group](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/working-groups/17-0-major-release/) - Expand the e-group visibility - Iterate on members - Update purpose & goals - Use [`17-0-release-coordination`](https://gitlab.enterprise.slack.com/archives/C04S5KLDB50) (internal) as the SSoT for all remaining clean up of 17.0 with a target of archiving by 17.3 (August 2024) - Run a X-Functional Post Mortem on severe issues - Align Product, CRO, Development and Infrastructure on clear action plan to drive process and technological improvements X-Functionally by `2024-08-01` - Including specifically tackling https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/Product/-/issues/13405+ - Assign DRIs and a set target delivery date of improvements before cutoff for all deprecation announcements: `2024-02-20` ## JTBD by Group These should be broken out into sub-epics and issues to keep this one crisp and for cross functional coordination - This section is WIP - [ ] Coordinate Release pipeline and Technical coordination for major release [Delivery Group & Infrastructure] - [ ] Update Deprecations Process - [ ] Formally introduce breaking change windows - [ ] Identify high and critical impact deprecations - [Product Management] - [ ] Outreach to Customers around high impact deprecations [Product, Customer Success & Support] - [ ] Marketing communications on breaking changes [Product & Marketing] ## Exit Criteria - [ ] JTBD by group (excluding Delivery) complete - [ ] Publicly available list of high impact breaking changes available - [ ] External customer comms sent