Open Source Growth Strategy

Maintained by:

Strategy

We will be executing in 4 key areas in support of the company's broader dual-flywheels strategy to attain more contributions. The 4 key areas together are the building blocks of our contributor & contribution 10x acceleration strategy.

flowchart LR subgraph moreContributions["More Contributions"] contributorIncrease["Contributor Increase"] contributionIncrease["Contribution Increase"] increaseValue("Increase Contribution Value") improveVelocity("Improve Contribution Velocity") scaleCommunity("Scale the Community") expandOutreach("Expand Outreach") scaleCommunity-->improveVelocity scaleCommunity-->increaseValue expandOutreach-->scaleCommunity increaseValue-->contributionIncrease improveVelocity-->contributorIncrease end style moreContributions fill:#FFF, stroke:#9370DB, stroke-dasharray: 5 5 style contributionIncrease fill:#9370DB,stroke:#9370DB,stroke-width:10px style contributorIncrease fill:#9370DB,stroke:#9370DB,stroke-width:10px style improveVelocity color:#6b4fbb, stroke:#9370DB style increaseValue color:#6b4fbb, stroke:#9370DB style expandOutreach color:#6b4fbb, stroke:#9370DB style scaleCommunity color:#6b4fbb, stroke:#9370DB click improveVelocity "./#improve-contribution-velocity" _self click increaseValue "./#increase-contribution-value" _self click expandOutreach "./#expand-outreach" _self click scaleCommunity "./#scale-the-community" _self

Improve Contribution Velocity

Provide an outstanding and efficient contributor experience, from onboarding materials to final merge. Improve Contributor Journey, making it easier and more efficient to contribute. Gather feedback from wider community contributors and product teams on contribution friction.

Reduce Open Community MR Age

Why: Improve the speed of contribution to production by reducing Open community MR Age (OCMA) & review time. We have identified product groups with the highest OCMA. Analysis and improvements are needed to address product groups with the biggest opportunity. In addition to improving MR review and gathering feedback.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9073
DRI: Contributor Success team

Simplify & improve contribution guides

Why: Make contribution guides easy to navigate. Our current contribution guides are fragmented and can be hard for new contributors to navigate and understand.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/quality/-/epics/16
DRI: Developer Relations team

Improve contribution tooling

Why: Provide fast and efficient contributor experience via our tooling. Our contributor tooling needs to be optimized for contributor productivity
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/quality/-/epics/2
DRI: Engineering Productivity team

Product groups focus

Why: Contribution submissions, backlog, and technology stack vary amongst all product groups. Providing a healthy community backlog alignment & establishing a common best practice outreach for all product groups.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9074
DRI: Product Operations, Developer Relations team & Contributor Success team

Increase Contribution Value

Incentivize, attract and retain contributors by providing a compelling value and regular recognition of contributors for their work. Contributor career advancement materials and awards.

Define contributor value proposition

Why: We need a clear definition of what drives people to contribute to GitLab and to present a compelling value proposition for increasing code contribution.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/quality/-/epics/11
DRI: Developer Relations team

Developer badges & certification

Why: Implement a badging system and eventually work towards a certification program for GitLab developers
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9075
DRI: Contributor Success team

Contributor recognition

Why: Provide sustained and impactful recognition to recognize & retain our contributors. Increase frequency and targeted recognition to types and persona of contributors
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9076
DRI: Contributor Success team & Developer Relations team

Contributor career advancement

Why: In Open Source Projects, the contributors’ motivation in addition to solving a bug or adding a missing feature is to get experience and build their CV for career advancement.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9077
DRI: Contributor Success team

Expand Outreach

Increase awareness with content and events to drive large amounts of contributors. Our outreach efforts so far have been limited. A proactive and focused effort to bring awareness and drive members from external communities will be required. Engineering to work alongside Developer Relations in expanded outreach events.

Increase contribution backlog exposure

Why: Contributing as a new member to a massive project can be overwhelming, which can lead to analysis paralysis and potentially losing contributors. We should offer a lens into a discoverable, sizable set of issues we can direct newcomers to. Consider using established 3rd party platforms.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/quality/-/epics/12
DRI: Developer Relations team

Scale contributor events

Why: Build a sense of belonging, provide the social environment for contributors to have their voice, meet with their peers, share knowledge and celebrate.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9078
DRI: Developer Relations team & Contributor Success team

Community office hours

Why: We need to scale office hour calls that have traditionally been a unique opportunity for product groups to provide support, guidance to code contributors as well as gather feedback.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/quality/-/epics/14
Status: Resolved
DRI: Developer Relations team & Contributor Success team

Why: Increase our social media presence beyond the currently limited mediums (Twitter, Discord), which will allow us to tap into existing developer communities.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/quality/-/epics/15
DRI: Developer Relations team

Scale the Community

Leverage the full-time customer contributor model and create wider community teams for rapid growth.

Create a governance model & allow community participation in decision-making

Why: A decision making model that works for the entire community allows us to make decisions faster. It allows wider community members with multiple domain expertise to make decisions on GitLab changes. It allows the maintainers to have the final sign-off. It lets the community be in the driving seat and fosters growth.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9079
DRI: Contributor Success team

Returning & Frequent Contributors

Why: Increased contribution by motivating recurring contributions from organizations that use or extend GitLab, such as customers, partners and OSS communities. Reward those that achieve that status with GitLab benefits that are valuable to the individual and the organization.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9080
DRI: Developer Relations team & Contributor Success team

Foster more collaboration

Why: We would like to depart from having contributors work single-handedly and create a team that can do more together.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9081
DRI: Contributor Success team

Contribution specialization

Why: To surface contribution opportunities tailored to tech professions, implement frontend, backend, UX, Test and etc specialization in contribution types and MR coaches. This also allows a more aligned interaction between contributor and MR coaches of the same specialization.
Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9082
DRI: Contributor Success team