As a result of our direct interactions with customers, the Support Team occupies a unique position in GitLab that gives us the opportunity to connect product managers with customer feedback, and influence changes. To take advantage of this opportunity, we've adopted a model that is known within GitLab as "Stable Counterparts." In brief, a "stable counterpart" is an assigned, permanent contact for a GitLab Team Member within another function in the company. See the Stable counterparts item on the Leadership page, and An ode to stable counterparts for more information.
Just like us, the product teams are spread across the globe. Due to this, it might not always be possible to sync with your counterparts.
[SSC Update: Group_Name: GitLab(Major).(Minor).(Patch)]
for your updates in both SWIR and in relevant slack channels. Having consistency in this will help us measure the success and usefulness of this initiative.There's many different groups, and no one approach to being a SSC will be the perfect fit for all. Finding out how to best work with your group can take a while (one Senior Support Engineer said it took them more than two years to feel they really figured it out), and as everything at GitLab it is an iterative and – hopefully – transparent process. The expectations listed in the section above are a good starting point, but they are neither compulsory nor can they be complete.
Here's some things that other SSCs are doing that might serve as additional inspiration:
@gitlab-com/support/support-stable-counterparts
GitLab group, and #support-stable-counterparts
Slack channel to share best practices with other SSCs, and to gather input and feedback on process changes, improvements and other discussions.
If your group doesn't have an SSC assigned and you'd like to request one, please create an issue in the support-stable-counterpart project and share in #support_team-chat and #spt_stable-counterparts.
During Q3-FY23 the SSC create and document process to ensure alignment of Support and Product issue prioritization and track results OKR focused on reaching out to Product and Engineering Managers, and their SSC/s to gather feedback. A common theme highlighted an interest from Product Managers having inputs from Support that may be able to provide insights for product planning and prioritization meetings with Product Managers.
SSCs that are regularly engaging with their product group are informing Support with knowledge they have picked up and the Product and Engineering Managers have built a steady relationship in these particular groups. There are still a few groups who are yet to build these foundational relationships, however, the feedback issues created an opportunity to encourage these discussions to start and a path forward for these groups to be carved out.
Based on feedback from SSCs regarding how to better inform product groups of the impact that issues have on customers, I have begun work on a Support-centric dashboard that will enable Support to identify trending issues and produce data to assist in prioritization. For more details, refer to Customer Support Linked Issues Dashboard.
The tables below lists all groups and stages that currently do not have an SSC assigned. You can view a list of groups where a Product and/or Engineering Manager has reached out to support requesting an SSC in the support-stable-counterpart project.
If you're interested in becoming a stable counterpart for a group,
Note: We encourage having more than 1 SSC for a group - so if the group you are interested in already has an SSC, don't let that deter your interest!
A couple of roles are not product group specific, but involve all the same expectations and responsibilities with some overlap of the Support Liaison role. Non-group specific counterparts typically also step in when the related group has questions where there is no SSC currently.
Section | Group | Group Contact | Support Liaison | Frequency |
---|---|---|---|---|
UX | Tech Writing | Susan Tacker | Cynthia Ng & Mike Lockhart | weekly team meeting |
UX | UX | Christie Lenneville | Cynthia Ng | weekly team meeting |
Section | Support Counterpart |
---|---|
Dev | Shaun McCann |
Sec | TBD |
Data Science | TBD |
Growth | Shaun McCann |
Fulfillment | John Lyttle |
Enablement | TBD |
SaaS Platforms | TBD |
Group | Support Counterpart |
---|---|
Manage : Authentication and Authorization | Cynthia Ng |
Manage : Import and Integrate | Olivier Némoz Saint-Dizier, Anton Smith |
Manage : Foundations | TBD |
Plan : Project Management | Ben Prescott |
Plan : Product Planning | TBD |
Plan : Optimize | Gabriel Yoachum |
Create : Source Code | TBD |
Create : Code Review | Ben King |
Create : IDE | Brad Sevy |
Verify : Pipeline Execution | Manuel Grabowski |
Verify : Pipeline Authoring | Manuel Grabowski |
Verify : Runner | Chris Day |
Verify : Runner SaaS | Chris Day |
Verify : Pipeline Security | Brie Carranza |
Package : Package Registry | TBD |
Package : Container Registry | TBD |
Secure : Static Analysis | David Coy, Christopher Mutua |
Secure : Dynamic Analysis | Kate Grechishkina |
Secure : Composition Analysis | Katrin Leinweber |
Secure : Vulnerability Research | Mario Mora |
Anti-Abuse : Anti-Abuse | Michael Gibson |
Deploy : Environments | Lewis Brown |
Monitor : Respond | Cody West |
Govern : Threat Insights | Gerardo Gutierrez |
Govern : Compliance | TBD |
Analytics : Analytics Instrumentation | TBD |
Analytics : Product Analytics | TBD |
Fulfillment : Purchase | Sokunrotanak Srey |
Fulfillment : Provision | Keven Hughes |
Fulfillment : Utilization | Shem Gyll |
Fulfillment : Billing and Subscription Management | Firdaws Farukh |
Growth : Acquisition | TBD |
Growth : Activation | TBD |
Systems : Distribution::Build | Diana Stanley, Nathan Black, Chris Kaburu |
Systems : Distribution::Deploy | Diana Stanley, Nathan Black, Chris Kaburu |
Systems : Gitaly::Cluster | Gerardo Gutierrez, David Wainaina |
Systems : Gitaly::Git | Gerardo Gutierrez |
Systems : Geo | Bo Carbonell, Łukasz Korbasiewicz |
Data Stores : Application Performance | Gabriel Yoachum |
Data Stores : Global Search | Vlad Stoianovici, Cleveland Bledsoe Jr |
Data Stores : Database | Ben Prescott |
Data Stores : Tenant Scale | Ben Prescott, Asmaa Hassan, Bruno Freitas |
SaaS Platforms : GitLab Dedicated | TBD |
SaaS Platforms : Switchboard | TBD |
SaaS Platforms : US Public Sector Services | TBD |