The following page may contain information related to upcoming products, features and functionality. It is important to note that the information presented is for informational purposes only, so please do not rely on the information for purchasing or planning purposes. Just like with all projects, the items mentioned on the page are subject to change or delay, and the development, release, and timing of any products, features or functionality remain at the sole discretion of GitLab Inc.
Stage | Plan |
Maturity | Viable |
Content Last Reviewed | 2024-11-11 |
Thanks for visiting this category direction page on Portforlio Management in GitLab. This page belongs to the Product Planning group of the Plan stage and is maintained by Amanda Rueda E-Mail.
This direction page is a work in progress, and everyone can contribute:
Our Portfolio Management strategy focuses on delivering a comprehensive, integrated solution for tracking strategic initiatives, aligning cross-functional work, and providing actionable insights to drive project outcomes. By enhancing tools for planning, tracking, and reporting, we enable organizations to manage complex project portfolios within GitLab’s single application framework, seamlessly connecting product and engineering teams.
GitLab supports popular enterprise Agile portfolio and project management frameworks, including Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Scrum, and Kanban.
Multi-level planning | Roadmaps | Kanban |
---|---|---|
We’re committed to enabling workflows that bring clarity to complex project landscapes, giving teams the insights they need to coordinate effectively, stay agile, and adapt to change with confidence. By investing in enhancements to visibility, reporting, and inter-team workflows, we aim to empower users at every level to contribute toward organizational goals, track meaningful progress, and make informed decisions.
Over the next several quarters we'll improve the core Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) for our users across varied workflows. We plan to enable users to maintain focus on their primary tasks while minimizing context switching, bolstering productivity. For example, improvements to dependency mapping, timebox tools, and visualization options empower users to make informed, data-driven decisions in real-time. Our enhancements to epics, issues, and roadmaps are designed to bring greater consistency, aligning the entire planning experience with how users think and work, rather than forcing adaptation to separate systems.
Ultimately, our vision is to make GitLab a comprehensive, intuitive hub for all project management needs, eliminating the need for external tools and creating a seamless experience for project managers, product owners, and developers alike.
In the next two years:
These UX Themes represent the JTBD we've decided are the most important for our users. We're working on features that improve on the ability to accomplish these goals.
Theme | Persona | JTBD |
---|---|---|
Support product managers in configuring and sharing hierarchy of work items to increase alignment in how planned work is driving larger goals | Parker | When visualizing the plan of how my strategy will be implemented, I want to display how prioritized items cascade up toward larger vision and business objectives, so I can increase alignment on the overall impact and importance of even the most granular items within my plan. |
Allow teams to group or relate work items to increase alignment on dependencies or related work. | Parker Delaney |
When splitting prioritized initiatives or features into requirements, I want to group related slices of value and surface dependencies, so I can maximize alignment on the scope of a business goal and efficiently plan its incremental delivery. |
Decrease effort and time it takes for teams to identify and monitor impediments so that they may be better mitigated. | Delaney | When reviewing a plan, I want to identify and enable continual monitoring of high risk items, so I can maintain effectiveness of mitigation plans, even as they evolve. |
Allow product managers to visualize and share progress and completion of goals in order to increase trust with stakeholders | Parker | When implementing to a plan, I need to monitor progress (velocity) so I can demonstrate that the team is efficiently capturing value for our stakeholders. |
Increase alignment of teams by allowing them to visualize status of work within a workflow | Parker Delaney |
When collaborating with a team or stakeholders, I want to communicate the current status of work continuously, so I can increase alignment on progress and any impediments that need to be addressed. |
Support teams in managing their capacity to increase predictability | Delaney | When planning a release, I want to prioritize and sequence estimated work based on feasibly, capacity, and ROI, so I can incrementally deliver toward business objectives. |
Empower users to prioritize work that best drives value | Parker | When reviewing proposed initiatives, I want to categorize opportunities based on how efficiently they drive the success of business objectives, so I can increase confidence in items I have prioritized, and feel empowered to say no to less impactful ideas. |
Increase alignment of teams by allowing teammates to easily update others on progress or status either manually or automatically | Sasha | When collaborating with a team or stakeholders, I want to maintain transparency to the status of work, to enable others to self-serve that information, and so I can increase alignment on progress and any impediments that need to be addressed. |
Support product teams in crafting a SSOT with well-documented requirements | Parker | When planning a release, I want to prioritize and sequence estimated work based on feasibly, capacity, and ROI, so I can incrementally deliver toward business objectives. |
BIC (Best In Class) is an indicator of forecated near-term market performance based on a combination of factors, including analyst views, market news, and feedback from the sales and product teams. It is critical that we understand where GitLab appears in the BIC landscape.
Feature | Description |
---|---|
Portfolio financial management | Visibility and insight into funding capacity rather than projects. Instead of determining how much it will cost to achieve the next two milestones, managers determine how much capacity is required to deliver a consistent flow of value. |
Portfolio level planning | Identifying which programs to invest in, and how much. Portfolios are largely trying to figure out what initiative to fund, based on when the previous one is scheduled to finish. |
Program level planning | Breaking large deliverables into chunks that make sense for each team and coordinating the teams' work. Programs need to worry about dependencies and coordination. |
Enterprise agile framework (including SAFe) | SAFe support includes the processes, roles, and artifacts that enable scaling across teams, and the ability to plan and track work and assess economic benefits using at a minimum Portfolio SAFe in SAFe v. 5.0. EAP tools may support multiple enterprise agile frameworks commonly used in the industry. |
Forecasting | A forecast is a calculation about the future completion of an item or items that includes both a date range and a probability. Forecasts take the progress to date of all of the programs, then make forward-looking predictions. |
Dependency management | Dependencies are the relationships between work that determine the order in which the work items (features, stories, tasks) must be completed by Agile teams. Dependency management is the process of actively analyzing, measuring, and working to minimize the disruption caused by intra-team and / or cross-team dependencies. |
Roadmapping | Roadmaps are the glue that link strategy to tactics. They provide all stakeholders with a view of the current, near-term, and longer-term deliverables that realize some portion of the Portfolio Vision and Strategic Themes. © Scaled Agile, Inc. |
End-to-end visibility to the value stream | This capability indicates the tool’s ability to show the progress of software throughout the value stream from ideation through to production realization of the customer and business value. |
Collaboration | Collaboration tools have the highest value for distributed organizations. These tools can range from virtual boards and team rooms to threaded conversations or advanced, work-item-context chat tools. |
Area of focus | GitLab | Digital.ai | Planview | Jira Align |
---|---|---|---|---|
Portfolio financial management | ⬜️ | 🟨 | 🟩 | 🟨 |
Portfolio level planning | ⬜️ | 🟩 | 🟨 | 🟨 |
Program level planning | ⬜️ | 🟩 | 🟨 | 🟩 |
Enterprise agile framework (including SAFe) | 🟨 | 🟩 | 🟩 | 🟩 |
Forecasting | ⬜️ | 🟨 | 🟨 | 🟩 |
Dependency management | ⬜️ | 🟨 | 🟨 | 🟩 |
Roadmapping | 🟨 | 🟩 | 🟨 | 🟩 |
End to end visibility to the value stream | 🟨 | 🟩 | 🟨 | 🟩 |
Collaboration | 🟩 | 🟨 | 🟨 | 🟩 |