The product handbook is widely referenced by product managers and cross-functional team members. Therefore, we want to follow a consistent change management process so all affected collaborators are aligned and informed when there are changes (specially new requirements, processes, meetings, etc.) that affect their workflow. To help ensure awareness across teams, when suggesting a change to the product handbook, please use the Change-Product-Handbook merge request description template. This ensures your changes are included in Product Operations Releases.
This template will also help you out by automatically adding labels and assigning required reviewers.
You will also be asked to indicate which type of change you are suggesting:
For a small improvement, please feel free to merge the MR yourself. Otherwise, the template will ping Product Operations for collaboration and review, and the guidance below should be followed for driving awareness:
Please note it is your responsibility to inform team members as needed about your merge request. Consider the following best practices:
We create products and experiences that customers love and value.
The Product Principles section is where you can learn about our strategy and philosophy regarding product development here at GitLab.
For a detailed view on how we do Product Development, read up on our established Product Processes.
To learn how the GitLab product and our Teams are organized review our Product Categorization section.
Learn about GitLab as a product, including what does it mean to be a single application, our subscription tiers and pricing model, and the basics of permissions in the platform.
Understand the roles and responsibilities of product managers.
Want to know more on what being a Product Manager at GitLab is like? Checkout our Product Manager Role guide for helpful information like our Career Development Framework and learning/development resources.
Learn how we measure success in Product via our Product KPIs, which are tracked in our Product project. For best practices and guidance on how to add instrumentation for features please review our Product Intelligence workflow.
Understand the OKR Process for the GitLab Product Team and review current and past OKRs.
Learn about our Product Leadership Team and learn about them via their personal README’s.
GitLab team members should leverage How to Engage to interact with the product team.
Members of the Product team are added to the private product group @gl-product. This group is used for internal communication and the @gl-product mention can only be used by project members.
Please remember that tagging @gl-product on issues will generate in-product to-do items and email notifications to all product team members, so use it only when you need to communicate with the entire product team.
If you are tagging @gl-product:
Required 🔎
The Product handbook contains a lot of content that includes a mix of advice, best-practices, mandatory process, team-specific content, and more. To help you find the most important items, look for the badge above that indicate the most essential, important, and/or obligatory processes that every Product Manager is expected to know by heart and follow, as opposed to other items which may be more for reference in certain situations or may be more optional than required. If you are adding or updating an essential handbook section, consider adding this badge there.
