| KPI | Health | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering Non-Headcount Plan vs Actuals | Okay |
|
| Engineering Handbook Update Frequency | Okay |
|
| R&D Overall MR Rate | Attention |
|
| R&D Wider MR Rate | Attention |
|
| Engineering Division New Hire Average Location Factor | Attention |
|
| Volume of Community MRs | Problem |
|
We need to spend our investors' money wisely. We also need to run a responsible business to be successful, and to one day go on the public market.
Target: Unknown until FY21 planning process
URL(s)
Health: Okay
The handbook is essential to working remote successfully, to keeping up our transparency, and to recruiting successfully. Our processes are constantly evolving and we need a way to make sure the handbook is being updated at a regular cadence. This data is retrieved by querying the API with a python script for merge requests that have files matching `/source/handbook/engineering/**` or `/source/handbook/support/**` over time.
Target: Unknown until we reach maturity level 2
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Okay
This is the total number of MRs that go into the product on a monthly basis (regardless if the author is a GitLab team member or an open source contributor) divided by the total headcount of the GitLab Inc R&D (the Product Management and Engineering divisions, but not the Support department). See Merge Request Rate for more detail on the MR Rate taxonomy. This metric measures how efficiently we are able to convert our investor's capital and the energy of our community to develop product and deliver value to users. The largest negative driver of this metric have been periods of intense recruiting and explosive headcount growth (100% in 2018, 130% in 2019). And the largest positive drivers are our iteration value (work breakdown) and open source contributions.
Target: Greater than 6 MRs per month
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Attention
This is the total number of MRs authored by non-GitLab team members that go into the product on a monthly basis divided by the total headcount of the GitLab Inc. R&D (the Product Management and Engineering divisions, but not the Support department). The reason we sometimes track the Wider rate is that MRs from our community take effort from one of our coaches to merge, and we want to incentivize that behavior.
Target: TBD
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Attention
We remain efficient financially if we are hiring globally, working asynchronously, and hiring great people in low-cost regions where we pay market rates. We track an average location factor for team members hired within the past 3 months so hiring managers can make tradeoffs and hire in an expensive region when they really need specific talent unavailable elsewhere, and offset it with great people who happen to be in more efficient location factor areas with another hire. The historical average location factor represents the average location factor for only new hires in the last three months, excluding internal hires and promotions. The calculation for the three-month rolling average location factor is the location factor of all new hires in the last three months divided by the number of new hires in the last three months for a given hire month. The data source is BambooHR data.
Target: 0.58
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Attention
Frequency of Community contribution merged MRs for all `is_part_of_product` projects over the last 12 months.
Target: Above 300 per month
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Problem
This is a subset of an existing KPI. Please see the definition for the parent KPI.
Employees are in the division `Engineering`.
Target: 525 engineering members by Jan 31, 2019
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Okay
We remain efficient financially if we are hiring globally, working asynchronously, and hiring great people in low-cost regions where we pay market rates. We track an average location factor by function and department so managers can make tradeoffs and hire in an expensive region when they really need specific talent unavailable elsewhere, and offset it with great people who happen to be in low cost areas.
Target: .58 average location factor
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Attention
Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging is one of our core values, and a general challenge for the tech industry. GitLab is in a privileged position to positively impact diversity in tech because our remote lifestyle should be more friendly to people who may have left the tech industry, or studied a technical field but never entered industry. This means we can add to the diversity of our industry, and not just play a zero-sum recruiting game with our competitors.
Target: It's against company policy to set diversity quotas (but we may add benchmarks to compare ourselves against).
URL(s)
Health: Attention
People are a priority and attrition comes at a great human cost to the individual and team. Additionally, recruiting (backfilling attrition) is a ludicrously expensive process, so we prefer to keep the people we have :)
Target: 90%
URL(s)
Health: Okay
Discretionary bonuses offer a highly motivating way to reward individual GitLab team members who really shine as they live our values. Our goal is to award discretionary bonuses to 10% of GitLab team members in the Engineering function every month.
Target: 10%
URL(s)
Health: Unknown
Engineering MR Rate is a key indicator showing how productive our team members are based on the average MR merged per team member. We currently count all members of the Engineering Division (Director, EMs, ICs) in the denominator because this is a team effort and we want to be cognizant of managerial overhead.
Target: Greater than 6 MRs per Month
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Problem
Amount of is_part_of_product merged merge requests which are labelled ~"feature::maintenance"
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Unknown
Amount of is_part_of_product merged merge requests which are labelled ~"feature::addition"
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Unknown
Amount of is_part_of_product merged merge requests which are labelled ~"bug"
Chart (Sisense↗)
Health: Unknown
| Value | Level | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Okay | The KPI is at an acceptable level compared to the threshold |
| 2 | Attention | This is a blip, or we’re going to watch it, or we just need to enact a proven intervention |
| 1 | Problem | We'll prioritize our efforts here |
| 0 | Unknown | Unknown |
| Value | Level | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Okay | We are correctly capturing and measuring data for GitLab.com and self-managed instances. |
| 2 | Attention | Missing one of: GitLab.com or self-managed data. |
| 1 | Problem | Missing both: GitLab.com and self-managed data. |
| 0 | Unknown | Unknown |
Pages, such as the Engineering Function Performance Indicators page are rendered by an ERB template that contains HTML code.
Other PI Pages sectionThese ERB templates calls custom helper functions that extract and transform data from the Performance Indicators data file.
kpi_list_by_org(org) helper function takes a required string argument named org (deparment or division level) that returns all the KPIs (pi.is_key == true) for a specific organization grouping (pi.org == org) from the Performance Indicators data file.pi_maturity_level(performance_indicator) helper function automatically assigns a maturity level based on the availability of certain data properties for a particular PI.pi_maturity_reasons(performance_indicator) helper function returns a reason for a PI maturity based on other data properties.performance_indicators(org) takes a required string argument named org (deparment or division level) that returns two lists - a list of all KPIs and a list of all PIs for a specific organization grouping (department/division).signed_periscope_url(data) takes in the sisense_data property information from Performance Indicators data files and returns a signed chart URL for embedding a Sisense chart into the handbook.The heart of pages like this are Performance Indicators data files which are YAML files. Each - denotes a dictionary of values for a new (K)PI. The current elements (or data properties) are:
| Property | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
name |
Required | String value of the name of the (K)PI. For Product PIs, product hierarchy should be separate from name by " - " (Ex. {Stage Name}:{Group Name} - {PI Type} - {PI Name} |
base_path |
Required | Relative path to the performance indicator page that this (K)PI should live on |
definition |
Required | refer to Parts of a KPI |
parent |
Optional | should be used when a (K)PI is a subset of another PI. For example, we might care about Hiring vs Plan at the company level. The child would be the division and department levels, which would have the parent flag. |
target |
Required | The target or cap for the (K)PI. Please use Unknown until we reach maturity level 2 if this is not yet defined. For GMAU, the target should be quarterly. |
org |
Required | the organizational grouping (Ex: Engineering Function or Development Department). For Product Sections, ensure you have the word section (Ex : Dev Section) |
stage |
Optional | the product stage (Ex: release) as defined in stages.yml |
group |
Optional | the product group (Ex: progressive_delivery) as defined in stages.yml |
category |
Optional | the product group (Ex: feature_flags) as defined in categories.yml |
is_key |
Required | boolean value (true/false) that indicates if it is a (key) performance indicator |
health |
Required | has two additional elements/property - level (inclusive value between 0-3) and reasons. This should be updated monthly before Key Meetings by the DRI. |
urls |
Optional | list of urls associated with the (K)PI |
sisense_data |
Optional | contains elements/properties related to Sisense, including chart (numeric Sisense widget ID), dashboard (numeric Sisense dashboard ID), shared_dashboard (Sisense shared dashboard ID), embed (v2) |
sisense_data_secondary |
Optional | same as sisense_data. Allows a second sisense chart to be included. |
public |
Optional | boolean flag that can be set to false where a (K)PI does not meet the public guidelines. |
pi_type |
Optional | indicates the Product PI type (Ex: AMAU, GMAU, SMAU) |
plan_type |
Optional | indicates if the metric is Free, Paid, or Both. |
telemetry_type |
Optional | indicates if the metric is available on SaaS, SM (self-managed), or Both. |
is_primary |
Optional | boolean flag that indicates if this is the Primary PI for the Product Group. |
instrumentation |
Optional | has two additional elements/property - level (inclusive value between 0-3) and reasons. This should be updated monthly before Key Meetings by the DRI. |
pi_workflow |
Optional | indicates the PI Workflow status |
Above ...Below ...At ...At or above ...At or below ...shared_dashboard, chart , and the dashboard key-value pairs to the corresponding Performance Indicators data file under the sisense_data property: in strings as it's an important character in YAML and will confuse the data parsing process. Put the string in "quotes" if you really need to use a :urls: should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one urlmaturity.level and health.level display a value between 0 and 3 (inclusive).