Product Handbook

Maintained by:

David DeSanto

@david

Welcome to the Product Team Handbook

The Product Team is led by David DeSanto.
The Product Handbook focuses on how we do product at GitLab.
Please see Product Direction to learn about what the Product Team plans to build.

Product Team Functions

Product Team Mission

We create products and experiences that customers love and value.

Consistency wins as you scale. Our organizational goal is to create a Product Manager (PM) system that maximizes the chances of success across new products, new features, and new team members.
We are shipping an experience, and not just a product. Don’t forget about the links between the product and the website, pricing & packaging, documentation, sales, support, etc.
It’s about our customers and doing a job for them, not the product itself. Think externally about customer problems, not internally about the technology.
It’s about love AND value. Will customers value what we are building? We need to make sure what we build helps build and extract customer value.

Contributing to the Product Handbook

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:

Small improvement (typos, clarifications, etc.)
Adding a new section
Modifying existing section
Documenting a new process
Adding a new page or directory
Other

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:

Informing team members about the changes

It is your responsibility to communicate with relevant team members about your merge request. Here are some best practices to follow:

For significant changes affecting the whole Product or Engineering team, consult Product Operations for the best communication strategy.
For changes specific to product management, tag @gl-product in the merge request before merging.
Indicate in the comment whether you are requesting contributions and feedback or simply providing information.
For changes relevant to other teams, tag department leads such as the VP of UX, VP of Development, or the Director of Quality Engineering in the merge request before merging.
Share and cross-post the merge request link with a brief description in relevant channels such as Slack #product, #product-leadership, #eng-managers, and #ux-managers.
Add the merge request as a read-only or discussion topic in the Weekly Product Management Meeting.
For more guidance on communication, refer to the GitLab Communication tips and best practices.

Product Management

If you'd like to collaborate with product management see the How to Engage guide.

Product Principles

The Product Principles section is where you can learn about our strategy and philosophy regarding product development here at GitLab.

Product Processes

For a detailed view on how we do Product Development, read up on our established Product Processes.

Product sections, stages, groups, and categories

To learn how the GitLab product and our Teams are organized review our Product Categorization section.

About the GitLab Product

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.

Product Manager Responsibilities

Understand the roles and responsibilities of product managers.

Being a Product Manager at GitLab

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.

Product Performance Indicators

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 Analytics Instrumentation workflow.

Product OKRs

Understand the OKR Process for the GitLab Product Team and review current and past OKRs.

Our Product Leadership Team

Learn about our Product Leadership Team and learn about them via their personal README’s.

Communicating with the Product Division

Below are team emails and handles that can be used for different departments and sub-departments in the Product Division. These groups are used for internal communication and the @mention can only be used by project members. Please remember that tagging @mention on issues will generate in-product to-do items and email notifications to all team members in that project, so use it only when you need to communicate with the entire team. For communication specifically for product managers, please leverage How to Engage.

@gl-product-leadership tags all group managers, directors and VPs in the Product Division
@gl-product-plt tags all direct reports to the VP Product in the Product Division
@gl-product tags to all members of Product Management, Product Monetization and Product Operations in the Product Division
[email protected] emails all members of Product Management, Product Monetization and Product Operations in the Product Division
[email protected] emails all members of UX (UX Research, Technical Writing and Product Design) in the Product Division
@gitlab-com/gitlab-ux tags all members of UX (UX Research, Technical Writing and Product Design) in the Product Division
@gitlab-com/gitlab-ux/managers tags all people managers within UX (UX Research, Technical Writing, and Product Design)
@gitlab-com/gitlab-ux/designers tags all Product Designers and Design Managers in UX
@gl-docsteam for all Technical Writers in UX

When you are tagging @mention:

Clearly state why you are tagging the entire product team and what action you need product team members to take.
Write a short summary in the same comment so team members can quickly understand the necessary context.
Review the issue title and description to ensure it has relevant details other product team members need BEFORE submitting the comment. The issue title will be the subject of email notifications and in-product to-do items.
If asking team members to review a change, please directly link to the specific page on the review app and any relevant issues or MRs.