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.
The Product Data Insights Group (formerally known as "Product Analysis") was created in October 2020 to provide dedicated, specialized analytics resources for the GitLab Product organization and to support product data-related analysis. This group, consisting of product analysts, reports to the Senior Director, Product Monetization & Operations. The group's primary customers are Product Managers across all sections, stages, and groups.
In addition to working with the Product organization, Product Data Insights is part of the Research & Development (R&D) Data Fusion Team, enabling collaboration between the product analysts and the Central Data team. Product Data Insights is also a member of the Functional Analytics Center of Excellence (FACE), a cross-functional group comprised of functional analytics teams across GitLab.
Simply put, the Product Data Insights group is charged with supporting product-related data needs across GitLab. While the scope is quite broad, the team cleanly fits into GitLab's 3-year strategy, namely the effort to be more customer centric. The Product Data Insights team will continue to deliver actionable insights that will help the Product organization make responsible decisions in feature development, prioritization, and help build foundations that allow GitLab to provide those insights directly to our customers. In addition, the team continues to support improving our free-to-paid conversion, optimizing new user onboarding and increasing retention. Part of Product Data Insights' role will be to enable greater self-service of product-related data and follow GitLab's handbook-first approach to building a strong remote culture.
FY23 themes and initiatives
All of these intiatives will be done while maintaining our commitment to user privacy.
Until FY23-Q1, the Product Data Insights team, then known as "Product Analysis", was heavily focused on supporting the Growth section, with fewer resources dedicated to support the other product sections, stages, and groups. Starting FY23-Q2, the Product Data Insights team will scale its support of the Product organization by embedding an analyst into each section. The team will work with respective section leaders to identify the areas with the largest need for product analyst support. Not only will the analysts learn the nuances of the product, they will lead efforts to document and improve instrumentation, enabling even further analysis of product usage.
While product analysts will be embedded in different sections/stages/groups, they should plan to allocate ~25% of their capacity for broader strategic work and initiatives.
As a functional analytics team, Product Data Insights is reliant on other teams within the Data Program to provide high-quality, easily-accessible data. As such, the team collaborates closely with the Central Data team and Product Intelligence group. Here is a quick summary of the responsbilities of each of these 3 teams:
| Team Name | DRI | Goal | Example Tasks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product Data Insights | Carolyn Braza: Senior Manager, Product Data Insights | Perform analysis to unlock product insights when the data is available | Ad hoc product analysis, experiment analysis, Product KPI tracking, and creation and maintenance of standardized Product metric dashboards |
| Product Intelligence | Sam Kerr: Group Manager, Product Analytics | Define and improve capabilities of product data set | Ensure our product data set is comprehensive, available, and accurate, and that team members are enabled to create new instrumentation, charts, and dashboards in a self-service fashion |
| Data Team | Rob Parker: Senior Director, Data and Analytics | Build and maintain product data models and infrastructure to support data analysis | Create repeatable and reliable product data sets & models & related data pipelines/processes |
You can read about the Product Data Insights group's issue intake, prioritization, and team processes on their handbook page.