Build the business case for GitLab

Be clear on who will likely be reading and reviewing your business case, and who will need to sign off on the project. Always know who makes spending decisions and talk to them in their business/financial language.

As you prepare your business case, keep in mind that the people reviewing it likely will have different levels of familiarity with terms and concepts like these. Don't use acronyms or technical terms they may not understand.

Spend time thinking about — and potentially asking — what is most important and painful for the people who'll be reviewing your business case. If it doesn't address the things they care most about, they'll be less likely to buy into what you're saying. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Learn
• Security issues
• Slow or delayed deployments
• Employee turnover and retention
• Hiring challenges
• Meeting customer needs

Are there any current company or department goals that GitLab would help them achieve? Do they have future business plans that GitLab's DevSecOps platform could help them realize?

For example, perhaps you need to:

• Modernize a specific application or applications
• Deliver a new critical application to the market
• Transform or objectively improve your ability to deliver software
• Modernize your DevSecOps capabilities
• Reduce security and compliance risks
• Increase operational efficiency by simplifying your development toolchain

Be sure to address your organization's requirements for a DevSecOps platform, and how GitLab addresses them.

If you don't have requirements, start with a value stream assessment to create them. This will look at your lines of business, the processes used to create and release software, and the time it takes to get it to a place where it can be used to generate revenue, retain existing customers, or generate business efficiencies. If you are interested in learning more about doing a value stream assessment with GitLab, contact us.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Increased deployment speed, greater ability to hit release dates, etc.
• Better security and easier compliance audits
• Less time and effort spent maintaining a complex toolchain
• Improved collaboration, breaking down departmental silos, etc.
• More satisfied customers that stick around, buy more, and/or recommend you
• Happier employees and better retention
• Easier recruiting and onboarding

Do your best to lay out the return on investment (ROI) that your organization can expect when you adopt GitLab. This can include the time and money you'll no longer have to spend maintaining a complex toolchain, and the various licensing fees you'll no longer have to pay as you reduce your toolchain. You also may see increases in revenue and customer retention from releasing higher quality software more often.

Try our ROI calculator to see how much your current toolchain is costing you and how much you could save with GitLab.

Try our ROI calculator

Numbers can add credibility and urgency to your business case. Learning that X% of organizations are already doing something you're not, or that organizations that are doing it are now able to do something they've always wanted to do Y times as often or faster, can be very motivating. Also look at other companies in your industry, as well as at your direct competitors, to see if they are saving money and increasing security and deployment speed with a DevSecOps platform.

Here are some sources to get you started:

• DORA's State of DevOps research program and State of DevOps Reports
• 2022 Global DevSecOps Survey, as well as 2021 and 2020
• 2022 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ of GitLab's Ultimate Plan study commissioned by GitLab

Seeing how a similar organization has achieved a similar goal can go a long way. Check out these case studies from a wide variety of GitLab customers — small businesses to enterprises, and in industries from financial services to retail and the public sector.

View Case Studies