Managing Product Issues

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5. License & Renewal Workflows
6. Managing Product Issues

On this page

• Reporting a product problem
• Support's issue list for Fulfillment
  • Accessing the list
  • List contents
  • List structure - sections
    • Top 10 - Prioritized
    • Next 10 - NOT Ordered
    • All the Rest - Not Ordered
  • Review for possible reprioritization
  • List structure - columns
  • Primary contributors
  • Prioritizing the Top 10
• Support's unofficial issue list

The Fulfillment Product Team and the L&R Support Team work closely together to identify, understand and prioritize issues in the Fulfillment-related parts of our product.

Reporting a product problem

When you encounter a product problem while working on a Zendesk ticket, use this workflow.

1. Search Fulfillment Meta and GitLab.org Fulfillment Section for an issue that matches the problem. Search also the parent groups of those projects for a matching epic.
2. If there is an existing issue or epic, then add a link to it in the ticket and include in the issue or epic any relevant information which will help with prioritization
3. Otherwise:
   1. For a new bug, open an issue in the relevant project using the appropriate one of the following templates:
      1. customers.gitlab.com (including /Admin) issues
      2. GitLab product issues
   2. For a new feature or tooling request, open an issue using the Fulfillment meta intake request template. A Fulfillment PM will review the request and move it to the relevant team and trackers if they accept it.
4. Add the appropriate labels to the issue or epic:
   • Add Support Interest::Categorize to indicate that GitLab Support wants to see this addressed
   • If it is impacting a customer's ability to use the GitLab licensing functionality successfully, then add Customer::Impact and UX

• For general guidance on adding comments and required labels for issues, please see the Working with issues workflow
• Fulfillment Product Management will decide the appropriate section and PM to which to assign each new issue
• If you believe a high priority issue is not being addressed quickly enough, then please contact any of the L&R Support Regional DRIs

Support's issue list for Fulfillment

The Support and Fulfillment teams use a Google spreadsheet to manage the issues and epics list, and to communicate asynchronously about it. This spreadsheet is the single source of truth for information about the product issues of concern to L&R Support.

Accessing the list

The issue list spreadsheet is available to all GitLab Team Members. To access it, open Support's Issue List for Fulfillment on Google Drive.

List contents

The spreadsheet should always contain on its main sheet the full list of all epics and issues that have any Support Interest::xxx label, and no other epics or issues.

We encourage everyone who applies the Support Interest::Categorize label to take an extra moment to add the labeled issue or epic to the end of the list in the spreadsheet. The Regional DRIs will also look for newly-labeled items each month and will add them to the list before beginning the prioritization exercises.

List structure - sections

Top 10 - Prioritized

The first 10 items on the list are ordered according to priority. These are the items that L&R Support has decided are the most important product issues for the Fulfillment Team to address. The only people who should move items in or out of the Top 10 section, or change the order within the section, are the Regional DRIs. This section of the list is colored with a red theme, indicating the hottest issues. All items in this section, except those being reviewed for possible reprioritization, have the label Support Interest::Now.

Next 10 - NOT Ordered

The next section contains items that fell just short of getting selected for the top 10. They are listed in no particular order. As a group, they represent the product issues that L&R Support would like Fulfillment to address once the top 10 are resolved. The only people who should move items in or out of this section are the Regional DRIs. This section of the list is colored with a yellow theme - almost hot. All items in this section, except those being reviewed for possible reprioritization, have the label Support Interest::Next.

All the Rest - Not Ordered

The third and final section contains all the remaining items in no particular order. All issues and epics should be added to this section when they are first labeled with Support Interest::Categorize. At the next prioritization exercise, those items will be moved to one of the other two sections of the list (and appropriately labeled) or relabeled Support Interest::Later. This section of the list is colored with a green theme.

Review for possible reprioritization

Anyone who wants to request that any issue or epic in the list be reviewed for possible reprioritization should:

1. Apply the Support Interest::Review label
2. Add a comment to the issue or epic outlining how they think it should be prioritized and their reasoning

List structure - columns

Request Name	Description	Epic or Issue	Product Group	Product DRI	Update
A simple, short description of the issue or epic. Could be the title if the title is clear.	A longer description of the issue or epic, still no more than a few sentences.	The issue or epic number, title and URL	The product group that owns the item. This is set by the Product Managers	The Product Manager. This is set by the Product Managers	Status information. Questions from Product or Development to each other or Support. This is the only really dynamic column.

Primary contributors

• Product Managers:
  • indicate product group ownership and product DRI assignment
  • ask questions and provide status updates
  • select items to be worked
  • move items to the Completed/Done sheet and provide final status and comments on those
• Engineering Managers
  • ask questions and provide status updates
• L&R Support Regional DRIs
  • move items between the list sections
  • add items labeled Support Interest::Categorize to the list and remove no-longer-needed items from the list
  • Populate and sort the Top 10 list
  • Populate the Next 10 list
  • ask and answer questions
• L&R SEs
  • add items labeled Support Interest::Categorize to the list
  • ask and answer questions

Prioritizing the Top 10

On a monthly basis, aligned with the product release cycle, L&R Support will determine what changes, if any, are needed in the list. By agreement with the Fulfillment Product Management Team, Support will keep the Top 10 list as stable as possible, making changes only when:

• an issue was fixed or otherwise closed within the last month and has been moved to the Completed/Done sheet
• an issue of exceptionally high importance arises and must be added to the Top 10, in which case another issue will be displaced
• Fulfillment and Support agree that priorities within the Top 10 should be changed to represent customer or Support needs more accurately

Support's unofficial issue list

The Regional DRIs are experimenting with maintaining an epic for use within L&R Support only. The thought is that the epic may present an easier-to-consume version of the epics and issues list that will help SEs to stay informed.