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.
This direction page was last reviewed on:
2024-09-19
👋 This is the group strategy for Project Management, which is part of the Plan stage. Please reach out to the group's Product Manager, Gabe Weaver (E-mail), if you'd like to provide feedback or ask any questions related to this product category.
This strategy is a work in progress and everyone can contribute:
GitLab's mission is to build software so that everyone can contribute and we aim to be the most popular collaboration platform for knowledge workers in any industry. The Project Management Group is a cross-departmental team focused on two primary categories – Team Planning and Service Desk
Team Planning's goal is to provide collaboration and planning capabilities to empower small, autonomous teams to continuously deliver customer and business value with the shortest possible cycle times. Features owned by the Team Planning category include work items (issues), tasks, milestones, iterations, boards, discussions, labels, todos, quick actions, and notifications.
View the Service Desk direction
GitLab identifies who our DevSecOps application is built for utilizing the following categorization. We list our view of who we will support when in priority order.
| Category | Allocation |
|---|---|
| Team Planning | 100% |
| Service Desk | 0% |
Our group level issue board provides detailed insight into everything currently in flight.
While we believe the following items are critically important to the long-term use cases we want to support within Plan, we currently are not focusing on solving them:
Check out our cross-functional Project Management team handbook page to view our current customer value, product quality, and process performance indicators (internal link).
The project management tools market is dominated by Jira (31%), Microsoft (18%), Smartsheet (6%), and Trello (5%). To be competitive, GitLab needs to solve for the following customer comments in the immediate future:
We’ve been told to use gitlab’s milestones to capture agile sprints, as they’re the only thing that can have burn down, they work well with boards and have concepts of time. The default way epics get their start/end dates is based on the milestones of the issues attached though – doesn’t make sense as an issue shouldn’t be assigned to an agile sprint until the sprint is eminent. (root of problem is that gitlab milestone must either be equated to agile milestone or agile sprint, not both – you’re missing a concept)
Needs to be a way to have a team velocity, as a scrum master be able to go through and say “This feature requires ~100 points of work, we can do 25 points per sprint, will take 4 sprints (8 weeks) – you want it done in 6 weeks, will either require to be simplified or increased resourcing.”
Need burn-down chart/progress status of sprints, features, initiatives, and milestones.
During sprint planning, need a way to see what my team’s velocity has been last several sprints to have a good idea of how much we should be planning for upcoming sprint.
Need an easy way to see how much I’m assigning to each team member during sprint planning (team members aren’t interchangeable – sprint can have user stories less than velocity, but if user stories are only doable by one team member then the work can’t get done).
Need to be able to answer questions around “which teams/members are working on this feature?”, “are we still on track to meet this milestone?”, “we want to add this new feature, how will that slow down other development?”, “This team is needed for another project, how will that effect timelines on this project?”, etc…
A comprehensive analysis comparing GitLab to best-in-class team planning solutions is available to internal team members here
What they are saying:
While we are not currently working on the items listed within this section, we believe that solving for them will significantly contribute to Plan's 3-year strategy. Once validated and team capacity is available, we will move these strategic items into our queue for prioritization and implementation.
We are currently focused on providing industry-leading solutions for the following Jobs To Be Done (JTBD):
| Job statements | Maturity | Confidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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. |
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Researched | Issue |
| When estimating work during refinement, I want to validate that requirements are valuable and discrete, so I can increase the amount of value delivered with the least effort. |
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Researched | Issue |
| 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. |
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Researched | Issue |
| When organizing priority work, I want to visualize our intended workflow, so I can increase team efficiency, collaboration, and predictability. |
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Researched | Issue |
| When collaborating with a team or stakeholders, I want to radiate the current status of work continuously, so I can increase alignment on progress and any impediments that need to be addressed. |
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Researched | Issue |
| Job statements | Maturity | Confidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| When reviewing my product strategy with leadership, I want to demonstrate how my plans will drive overall vision and objectives toward reality, so I can increase buy-in, trust, and allocation of resources toward my efforts. |
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Researched | Issue |
| When synthesizing inputs, 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. |
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Researched | Issue |
| 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. |
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Researched | Issue |
| When soliciting feedback and collaboration on the implementation of my strategy, I want to craft a view of my plan with the intended audience in mind, so I can increase team and stakeholder alignment through effective storytelling at the correct level of abstraction. |
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Researched | Issue |