The goal of the team is to increase the technical improvements and efficiency of our contribution process to sustain our ambition of 1000+ contributors with merged MRs per month to GitLab.
In FY23 we will be focused on growing the number of unique new monthly contributors, reducing OCMA and increasing MRARR. This will increase development velocity without requiring additional engineering resources. Parallel to this we'll increase observability of community contributed value through improving the business intelligence around it. This will allow us to create some predictability through foreshadowing. These efforts are cross-functional and require working together with Marketing and Product Development.
This accounts for 70 - 80% of the workload. The remaining 20 - 30% is ad-hoc work. The ad-hoc work is eclectic and ranges from supporting customers on contributions, supporting various open source initiatives and supporting the Engineering Productivity team.
Every quarter, the team commits to Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). The below shows current and previous quarter OKRs, it updates automatically as the quarter progresses.
We have the following Performance Indicators
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Nick Veenhof | Director, Contributor Success |
| Rémy Coutable | Staff Backend Engineer, Contributor Success |
Contributor Success team uses these Slack channels:
File an issue to work with us: in our task project
gitlab-com level.This team has the following immediate work items planned.
Triage automations are handled by the Triage Ops project. Please see the project documentation on instructions how to create new or edit existing automations.
Community contribution label, and assigns the MR to its author.CODEOWNERS file) to review non-draft MRs (happens only once).#ux-community-contributions Slack channel (internal) to ask a UX reviewer to review non-draft MRs, when the UX label is set in an MR (happens only once), and let the author know about the Slack ping.help command
request_review command
label command
type:: and group:: labels) to the MR. Available 60 times per author per hour.idle/stale labels from MRs in which there is human activity.feedback command
#mr-feedback Slack channel (internal).Hackathon label on Community contribution MRs opened during the Hackathon dates.We have 2 triage process for the new merge requests from the wider community created under gitlab-org
Community contribution label is automatically applied by the GitLab Bot to MRs submitted by wider community members.
gitLab-org list of merge requests.1st contribution label is added to first-time contributions. Every time a contributor is opening a merge request under the gitlab-org namespace for the first time, the label 1st contribution is automatically applied to the merge request.
gitlab-org list of merge requests.Merge Request Coaches are available to help contributors with their MRs. This includes:
coach will finish label will be added to the MR and the coach will either directly push new commits to the MR, or re-create a new MR with the original changes.@gitlab-org/coaches.Merge Request Coaches can be found in:
Merge Request Coach in the department filter.There is also the #mr-coaching channel in GitLab Slack if GitLab team members have any questions related to community contributions.
More information on Merge Request Coaches (including how to become a Merge Request Coach) can be found in the MR coach lifecycle page.
All external contributions to GitLab are subject to the GitLab DCO or CLA, depending on where the contribution is made and on whose behalf.
Instructions for corporate contributors to enter into an overarching Corporate CLA covering all contributions made on their behalf are set out on the DCO-CLA page.
We work with the Community Relations team, to recognize contributors
A nomination process is also available to nominate a contributor
There's a working group with members from Quality and Community Relations that aims to streamline and improve contributor efficiency. It implements key business iterations that results in substantial and sustained increases to community contributors & contributions.
The code contributor user journey is documented in the handbook - User Journey
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.
Provide an outstanding and efficient contributor experience, from onboarding materials to final merge. Improve Contributor Journey, making it easier and efficient to contribute. Gather feedback from Wider community contributors and product teams on contribution friction.
Incentivise, attract and retain contributors by providing a compelling value and regular recognition of contributors for their work. Contributor career advancement materials and awards.
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 along side Community Relations in expanded outreach events.
Leverage the full-time customer contributor model and create wider community teams for rapid growth.