Data Team - Planning Drumbeat

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• Data Team Planning Drumbeat
  • Goal of the Planning Drumbeat
  • Bi-Weekly Milestone Planning
  • Quarterly OKR Planning
    • OKR Structure
    • OKR Setup
    • End of Quarter OKR Review
• T-Shirt Sizing Approach
• Work Breakdowns

GitLab Data follows a program to help align all teams towards the results that will help GitLab grow.

Data Team Planning Drumbeat

Watch our Planning Drumbeat Walkthrough Video on GitLab Unfiltered.

The Data Team Planning Drumbeat is a pre-set sequence that happens every quarter. The Planning Drumbeat adheres to GitLab's financial year/quarter schedule and Quarterly Objective and Key Results for prioritization and alignment. The Data Team Planning calendar is as follows:

link to orginal

Milestone naming convention; Milestone FYxx-Qxx-MSxx. I.e. FY22-Q02-MS01
LT = Leadership Team (@rparker2, @iweeks, @dvanrooijen2, @mlaanen)
DT = Data team (Product Fusion Team, GTM Fusion Team or Data Platform Team)

The overall ambition is to structure why, when and what we are doing.

• OKRs will lead to why
• Work breakdown will lead to what
• Milestone planning will lead to when

This top-down approach is leading, but not fully limited to the way we work.

Goal of the Planning Drumbeat

The goal of the Planning Drumbeat is to improve our ability to plan and estimate work through better understanding of our velocity. During the milestone planning process, we assign issue points, which are a good measure of consistency, as milestone over milestone should share an average. Then we pull into the milestone based on when we think we can commit to the work being completed. Then issues are prioritised according to our standing priorities.

This approach has many benefits, including:

1. It helps ensure the highest priority projects are being completed
2. It can help leadership identify issues that are blocked
3. It provides leadership view into the work of the data team, including specialty analysts whose priorities are set from outside the data function
4. It encourages consistent throughput from team members
5. It makes clear to stakeholders where their ask is in priority
6. It makes clear to all team where their duty is in priority
7. It helps alleviate the pressure of planning the next milestone, as issues are already ranked

The Planning drumbeat and the results it helps us deliver is a collaborative team-effort

Bi-Weekly Milestone Planning

The data team works in two-week intervals, called milestones. 1 milestone per quarter will take three weeks long, because a quarter contains 13 weeks. The milestone that takes 3 weeks is the milestone that covers a major holiday or if the majority of the team is on vacation or at Contribute. Milestones start on Wednesdays and end on Tuesdays. This discourages last-minute merging on Fridays and allows the team to have milestone planning meetings at the top of the milestone.

Milestone planning should take into consideration:

• vacation timelines
• conference schedules
• team member availability
• team member work preferences (specialties are different from preferences)

The timeline for milestone planning is as follows:

• Meeting Preparation - Responsible Party: Milestone Planner
  • Investigate and flesh out open issues.
  • Assign issues to the milestone based on alignment with the Team Roadmap.
  • Note: Issues are not assigned to an individual at this stage, except where required.

Quarterly OKR Planning

Data Team OKRs aspire to align with Business Technology OKRs, Finance Division OKRs, and CEO OKRs, thereby aligning with the OKRs of the Divisions we support. The Data Team also creates OKRs for Data Platform infrastructure development and these OKRs may not always map to immediate term Business Partner OKRs. Overall, OKRs constitute 60-75% of the Data Team's Quarterly Capacity, with Production Operations as the only established higher priority.

Data Team OKRs are managed with GitLab Plan using Epics and Issues using a standard naming scheme and structure and this approach:

• enables async contributions and planning
• clearly defines Data Team priorities
• helps to keep Epic and Issue description content to a manageable level
• supports the Rolly Bot for regular progress reporting

After OKRs have been drafted and shared across the Data Team, they are shared with Business Partner stakeholders for feeedback. Once the draft process is complete, three summarized Objectives and KRs are published into the Business Technology Group Project for sharing with the broader Business Technology Team, Finance Team, and company. These summarized Objectives and KRs attempt to capture the top OKRs in support of business results.

OKR Structure

OKR Setup

All Epics are part of the GitLab Data Group and are marked Confidential and all related Issues are stored in the GitLab Data Analytics project.

1. Head the current Fiscal Year's Data Team Objectives, Newsletters, and Report Cards Epic.
2. From the Fiscal Year parent epic, create a new child Fiscal Quarter Epic
   • Create a title in the format DRAFT: FYxx-Qx Data Team Objectives and Planning Drumbeat
   • An example title is DRAFT: FY23-Q1 Data Team Objectives and Planning Drumbeat
   • Apply the Planning_Drumbeat_FQ_Parent Template
   • Mark the Epic Confidential
3. From the new Fiscal Quarter Epic just created, create 1 Epic per Objective
   • Give each new Epic a title in the format FYxx-Qx Data Objective x: <name of objective>
   • An example title is FY23-Q1 Data Objective 1: Accelerate Growth and Product with Usage Analytics and Tooling
4. For each Objective, add 1 Epic per Key Result
   • Give each new Key Result Epic a title in the format FYxx-Qx Data Objective X, KR Y: <name of key result>
   • An example title is FY23-Q1 Data Objective 1, KR 1: Deliver a New Adoption Performance Dashboard to Product with 10 Users Trained
   • Add detail to this Key Result Epic, including Direction, Teams Supported, Business Partners, and the Key Result Measures. Include objective measures and dates if available.
5. At this point, the structure is complete and the Team owners will work with their respective teams to develop Work Breakdowns for each KR Epic.
6. Once all of the Epics are created and defined, share the Key Result Epic with appropriate business partners and stakeholders through the #data channel and @ mentions of the business partners to solicit review and feedback. All feedback should be added as comments into the Key Result Issue.

End of Quarter OKR Review

During the OKR Review, the Data Leadership Team reviews the current status of the current FQ KRs. The results of the OKRs are evaluated and propagated to next FQ OKRs where applicable.

T-Shirt Sizing Approach

We use a T-Shirt sizing approach for quickly sizing the work required to deliver new issues, epics, and longer-term initiatives. The T-Shirt sizing approach is designed to support work breakdowns towards the creation of detailed work plans, but also intended to provide a sufficient level of detail to manage overall scope.

Work Breakdowns

Work breakdowns are always developed as a part of the Quarterly OKR Planning Drumbeat, but can also be leveraged to help scope and plan new initiatives, infrastructure projects, and similar multi-person or multi-week projects. The outcome of the work breakdown is a detailed description of the work to be performed, deliverables and responsibilities, and a high-level timeline.

• As a part of the Quarterly OKR Planning Drumbeat, work breakdowns are embedded in the KR Description.
• As a part of a stand-alone or ad-hoc initiative, work breakdowns are embedded in the appropriate Epic Description.
• As an example of a Work Breakdown, see this FY22-Q4 Data Platform Work Breakdown.

Work Breakdowns consider the following inputs:

1. Defined upcoming OKRs
2. OKR Reviews
3. New / forward looking insights
4. Team availability
5. Team member ambitions

The work breakdown is team effort and everyone is encouraged to contribute.