--- layout: handbook-page-toc title: Product sections, stages, groups, and categories extra_js: - listjs.min.js - categories.js --- ## On this page {:.no_toc .hidden-md .hidden-lg} - TOC {:toc .hidden-md .hidden-lg} ## Interfaces We want intuitive interfaces both within the company and with the wider community. This makes it more efficient for everyone to contribute or to get a question answered. Therefore, the following interfaces are based on the product categories defined on this page: - [Home page](/) - [Product page](/product/) - [Product Features](/features/) - [Pricing page](/pricing/) - [DevOps Lifecycle](/stages-devops-lifecycle/) - [DevOps Tools](/devops-tools/) - [Product Direction](/direction/) - [Stage visions](/direction/#devops-stages) - [Documentation](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/#complete-devops-with-gitlab) - [Engineering](/handbook/engineering/) Engineering Manager/Developer/Designer titles, their expertise, and department, and team names. - [Product manager](/handbook/product/) responsibilities which are detailed on this page - [Our pitch deck](/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/#company-pitch-deck), the slides that we use to describe the company - [Strategic marketing](/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/) specializations ## Hierarchy The categories form a hierarchy: 1. **Sections**: Are a collection of stages. We attempt to align these logically along common workflows like Dev, Sec and Ops. Sections are maintained in [`data/sections.yml`](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/master/data/sections.yml). 1. **Stages**: Stages start with the 7 **loop stages**, then add Manage, Secure, and Defend to get the 10 (DevOps) **value stages**, and then add the Growth and Enablement **team stages**. Values stages are what we all talk about in our marketing. Stages are maintained in [`data/stages.yml`](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/master/data/stages.yml). Each stage has a corresponding [`devops::` label](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/contributing/issue_workflow.html#stage-labels) under the `gitlab-org` group. 1. **Group**: A stage has one or more [groups](/company/team/structure/#product-groups). Groups are maintained in [`data/stages.yml`](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/master/data/stages.yml). Each group has a corresponding [`group::` label](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/contributing/issue_workflow.html#group-labels) under the `gitlab-org` group. 1. **Categories**: A group has one or more categories. Categories are high-level capabilities that may be a standalone product at another company. e.g. Portfolio Management. To the extent possible we should map categories to vendor categories defined by [analysts](/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/analyst-relations/). There are a maximum of 8 high-level categories per stage to ensure we can display this on our website and pitch deck. ([Categories that do not show up on marketing pages](/handbook/marketing/website/#working-with-stages-groups-and-categories) show up here in *italics* and do not count toward this limit.) There may need to be fewer categories, or shorter category names, if the aggregate number of lines when rendered would exceed 13 lines, when accounting for category names to word-wrap, which occurs at approximately 15 characters. Categories are maintained in [`data/categories.yml`](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/master/data/categories.yml). Each category has a corresponding [`Category:` label](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/contributing/issue_workflow.html#category-labels) under the `gitlab-org` group. 1. **Features**: Small, discrete functionalities. e.g. Issue weights. Some common features are listed within parentheses to facilitate finding responsible PMs by keyword. Features are maintained in [`data/features.yml`](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/master/data/features.yml). It's recommended to associate [feature labels](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/contributing/issue_workflow.html#feature-labels) to a category or a group with `feature_labels` in the [`data/categories.yml` or `data/stages.yml`](/handbook/marketing/website/#working-with-stages-groups-and-categories). Notes: - Groups may have scope as large as all categories in a stage, or as small as a single category within a stage, but most will form part of a stage and have a few categories in them. - Stage, group, category, and feature labels are used by the automated triage operation ["Stage and group labels inference from category labels"](/handbook/engineering/quality/triage-operations/). - We don't move categories based on capacity. We put the categories in the stages where they logically fit, from a customer perspective. If something is important and the right group doesn't have capacity for it, we adjust the hiring plan for that group, or do [global optimizations](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/product-management/process/#prioritize-global) to get there faster. - We don't have silos. If one group needs something in a category that is owned by another group, go ahead and contribute it. ### Naming Anytime one hierarchy level's scope is the same as the one above or below it, they can share the same name. For groups that have two or more categories, but not *all* categories in a stage, the group name must be a [unique word](/handbook/communication/#mecefu-terms) or a summation of the categories they cover. For such groups, their name should be written as "Stage:Group" when the writer wants to give extra context. This can be useful in email signatures, job titles, and other communications. E.g. "Monitor:Health" rather than "Monitor Health" or "Monitor, Health." ### More Details Every category listed on this page must have a link to a direction page. Categories may also have documentation and marketing page links. When linking to a category using the category name as the anchor text (e.g. from the chart on the homepage) you should use the URLs in the following hirearchy: Marketing product page > docs page > direction page E.g Link the marketing page. If there's no marketing page, link to the docs. If there's no docs, link to the direction page. ### Solutions [Solutions](#solutions) can consist of multiple categories as defined on this page, but there are also other ones, for example industry verticals. Solutions typically represent a customer challenge, how GitLab capabilities come together to meet that challenge, and business benefits of using our solution. ### Capabilities Capabilities can refer to stages, categories, or features, but not solutions. ### Layers Adding more layers to the hierarchy would give it more fidelity but would hurt usability in the following ways: 1. Harder to keep the [interfaces](#Interfaces) up to date. 1. Harder to automatically update things. 1. Harder to train and test people. 1. Harder to display more levels. 1. Harder to reason, falsify, and talk about it. 1. Harder to define what level something should be in. 1. Harder to keep this page up to date. We use this hierarchy to express our organizational structure within the Product and Engineering organizations. Doing so serves the goals of: - Making our groups externally recognizable as part of the DevOps lifecycle so that stakeholders can easily understand what teams might perform certain work - Ensuring that internally we keep groups to a reasonable number of stable counterparts As a result, it is considered an anti-pattern to how we've organized for categories to move between groups out of concern for available capacity. When designing the hierarchy, the number of sections should be kept small and only grow as the company needs to re-organize for [span-of-control](/handbook/leadership/#management-group) reasons. i.e. each section corresponds to a Director of Engineering and a Director of Product, so it's an expensive add. For stages, the DevOps loop stages should not be changed at all, as they're determined from an [external source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps_toolchain). At some point we may change to a different established bucketing, or create our own, but that will involve a serious cross-functional conversation. While the additional value stages are our own construct, the loop and value stages combined are the primary stages we talk about in our marketing, sales, etc. and they shouldn't be changed lightly. The other stages have more flexibility as they're not currently marketed in any way, however we should still strive to keep them as minimal as possible. Proliferation of a large number of stages makes the product surface area harder to reason about and communicate if/when we decide to market that surface area. As such, they're tied 1:1 with sections so they're the minimal number of stages that fit within our organizational structure. e.g. Growth was a single group under Enablment until we decided to add a Director layer for Growth; then it was promoted to a section with specialized groups under it. The various buckets under each of the non-DevOps stages are captured as different groups. Groups are also a non-marketing construct, so we expand the number of groups as needed for organizational purposes. Each group usually corresponds to a backend engineering manager and a product manager, so it's also an expensive add and we don't create groups just for a cleaner hierarchy; it has to be justified from a [span-of-control](/handbook/leadership/#management-group) perspective or limits to what one product manager can handle. ## Changes The impact of changes to stages and groups is felt [across the company](/company/team/structure/#stage-groups). Merge requests with [changes to stages and groups and significant changes to categories](/handbook/marketing/website/#working-with-stages-groups-and-categories) need to be created, approved, and/or merged by each of the below: 1. VP of Product 1. VP of Product Strategy 1. The Product Director relevant to the stage group(s) 1. The Engineering Director relevant to the stage group(s) 1. CEO The following people need to be on the merge request so they stay informed: 1. VP of Engineering 1. Senior Director of Development 1. Director of Quality 1. The Product Marketing Manager relevant to the stage group(s) ### Examples Because it helps to be specific about what is a significant change and what should trigger the above approval process, below are two non-exhaustive lists of examples that would and would not, respectively, require approval. Changes that require the above approvers include: * Changes to a stage, group, or category name * Removal or addition of a stage, group, or category Changes that require approval only from the relevant Product Director include: * Changing a category maturity date * Changes to section or group member lists * Changes to a category vision page ## DevOps Stages  <%= partial("includes/product/categories") %> <%= partial("includes/product/categories-names") %> ## Possible future Stages We have boundless [ambition](/handbook/product/#how-this-impacts-planning), and we expect GitLab to continue to add new stages to the DevOps lifecycle. Below is a list of future stages we are considering: 1. Data, maybe leveraging [Meltano product](https://meltano.com/) 1. ML/AI, maybe leveraging [Kubeflow](https://www.kubeflow.org/) 1. Networking, maybe leveraging some of the [open source standards for networking](https://www.linux.com/news/5-open-source-software-defined-networking-projects-know/) and/or [Terraform networking providers](https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/type/network-index.html) 1. Design, we already have [design management](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1445) today 1. Govern, combined dashboards for secure, defend, and maybe things like requirements management Stages are different from the [application types](/direction/maturity/#application-type-maturity) you can service with GitLab. ## Maturity Not all categories are at the same level of maturity. Some are just minimal and some are lovable. See the [category maturity page](/direction/maturity/) to see where each category stands. ## Solutions GitLab also does the things below that are composed of multiple categories. 1. Software Composition Analysis (SCA) = Dependency Scanning + License Compliance + Container Scanning 1. Application Performance Monitoring (APM) = Metrics + Tracing + Real User Monitoring (RUM) 1. Project Management = Issue Tracking + Kanban Boards + Time Tracking 1. Agile Portfolio Management = Epics + Roadmaps + Issue Tracking + Kanban Boards + Time Tracking We are [intentional in not defining SCA as containing SAST and Code Quality](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/26897#note_198503054) despite some analysts using the term to also include those categories. ## Other functionality This list of other functionality so you can easily find the team that owns it. Maybe we should make our features easier to search to replace the section below. ### Other functionality in [Plan](/handbook/product/categories/#plan-stage) stage - markdown functionality - assignees - milestones - due dates - labels - issue weights - quick actions - email notifications - todos - GraphQL API foundational code ### Other functionality in [Create](/handbook/product/categories/#create-stage) stage - [gitlab-shell](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-shell) - [gitlab-workhorse](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-workhorse) #### [Source Code group](/handbook/product/categories/#source-code-group) - [Repository Mirroring](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/workflow/repository_mirroring.html) ### Other functionality in Verify - [Runner](https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/) ### Other functionality in [Secure](/handbook/product/categories/#secure-stage) stage #### [Static Analysis group](/handbook/product/categories/#static-analysis-group) - [Interacting with Vulnerabilities](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/index.html#interacting-with-the-vulnerabilities) #### [Dynamic Analysis group](/handbook/product/categories/#dynamic-analysis-group) - [Instance, Project and Group Security Dashboards](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/security_dashboard/) #### [Composition Analysis group](/handbook/product/categories/#composition-analysis-group) - [Pipeline and Merge Request Security reports](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/merge_requests/#security-reports-ultimate) - [Dependency List](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/dependency_scanning/#dependency-list) - Security Reports Integration - [Policy Settings](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/2075) ### Other functionality in [Monitor stage](/handbook/product/categories/#monitor-stage) #### [APM group](/handbook/product/categories/#apm-group) - [GitLab Self-monitoring](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/783) - [Instrumentation Workflow](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1945) - [Triaging Workflow](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1947) #### [Health group](/handbook/product/categories/#health-group) - [Operations Dashboard](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/141) - [Resolve Workflow](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1972) - [Improve Workflows](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1973) ### Shared functionality Some areas of the product are shared across multiple stages. Examples of this include, among others: * Navigation used throughout the application, including the top bar and side bar. * Shared project views, like the [project](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/#projects) overview and settings page. * Functionality specific to the [admin area](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/admin_area/settings/) and not tied to a feature belonging to a particular stage. Issues related to these areas should be owned on a case-by-case basis, depending on the problem to solve. If you encounter an issue falling into a shared area, you can: * Apply the `group::not_owned` label to indicate a lack of ownership that requires resolution. * `@` mention a product manager in the most closely related stage for assistance with ownership and prioritization. Once a responsible individual for the issue has been established, remove the `group::not_owned` label and replace it with an appropriate label for the group who is taking ownership for the issue.