Frontend Vision Group

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5. Frontend Vision Group

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Attributes

Property	Value
Date Created	2023-03-27
Target End Date	TBD
Slack	#wg_frontend-vision (only accessible from within the company)
Google Doc	Agenda (only accessible from within the company)
Overview & Status	See Exit Criteria Progress

Context

Currently, our frontend development guidelines only document features and practices we are currently using in production. There is no clear documentation about what we see as a desired state of the frontend at GitLab, nor guidelines regarding practices we plan to deprecate. It would be nice to define a set of high-level expectations regarding frontend architecture, tech stack, and best practices as we see them in the scope of three years from now. Here is a non-exhaustive list of topics we should discuss:

• Single-Page Application vs Multi-Page Application vs hybrid approach (multiple SPA's that handle some functionality).
• Server-Side rendering
• Technical stack (frontend framework, state management approach, testing levels and tools)
• Real-time features, optimistic updates, frontend caching and "snappy GitLab experience" overall
• Exception process when certain group requires the tool that deviates from the main strategy

Exit Criteria

1. Add introduction page to frontend documentation, explaining direction and high-level overview of the frontend codebase/architecture.
2. Include evolution of codebase over three year horizon.
3. List frontend technologies used and the design principals that guide the frontend team's work.
4. Explicitely define deprecation/removal plans, including why these features are being deprecated.
5. Communicate outcome to the broader frontend functional group.
6. Discuss and document communication plan, including frequency of updates from working group.
7. Document usage of reusable components.
8. Determine plan around vue-shared.
9. Determine and document guide on creating/using reusable components.
10. Determine DRIs around specific parts of frontend documentation.
11. Complete an update to the frontend RFC process.
12. Determine how the exception to the main strategy process will work, and if there is a need for a separate area for "wild" ideas.
13. Determine evaluation and decision-making process for RFCs.

Exit Criteria Progress

Criteria	Start Date	Completed Date	Progress	DRI
Add guidelines about frontend vision			0%	@you?

Roles and Responsibilities

Working Group Role	Person	Title
Executive Sponsor	Christopher Lefelhocz	VP of Development (Delegating to Tim Zallmann)
Executive Sponsor	Tim Zallmann	Senior Director of Engineering
Facilitator	Donald Cook	Engineering Manager, Plan:Project Management
Functional Lead	Natalia Tepluhina	Principal Engineer, Plan
Member	Vitaly Slobodin	Staff Frontend Engineer, Fulfillment
Member	Paul Slaughter	Staff Frontend Engineer, Create:IDE
Member	Mark Florian	Senior Frontend Engineer, Ecosystem:Foundations
Member	Lukas Eipert	Senior Frontend Engineer, Ecosystem:Foundations
Member	Frédéric Caplette	Senior Frontend Engineer, Verify:Pipeline Authoring
Member	Andrei Zubov	Senior Frontend Engineer, Release
Member	Stanislav Lashmanov	Senior Frontend Engineer, Create:Source Code
Member	Florie Guibert	Senior Frontend Engineer, Plan:Product planning