Demonstrations
Demo Systems Overview and Specific Environments
The Demo Systems Handbook page provides an overview of the demo system infrastructure used for demonstrating GitLab features, value propositions, and workflows.
See the Environments sub-page for specific details on how to access the environments for use in your demos.
Demo Readiness
Solutions Architects are occasionally called on at a moments notice to give a demo or join a call to show a prospect or customer specific GitLab functionality. A best practice for being prepared for these demo requests is to have a minimized browser window with various content preloaded into the browser tabs. Examples of common environments utilized are listed below. Note that accessing some of these links are only enabled for GitLab team-members. (To-do: port this list to the demo catalog)
- The GitLab Demo Systems provides a catalog of demos and the sandbox infrastructure for performing demos.
- The GitLab.org Group level clearly represents GitLab Epics, Roadmaps and cross-project issue views used for planning releases
- A GitLab.com project driven by Auto DevOps which includes a populated issue board as well as an active Merge Request is highly useful for describing value of workflow utilizing GitLab Auto DevOps for build, test, security and review
- This GitLab.com project is commonly utilized specifically for security discussions
- The production monitoring for GitLab.com is useful for any discussion regarding custom and in-app monitoring
- The production Grafana instance showing GitLab Runner details is a great way to represent the art of the possible as it relates to monitoring and dashboards
- The GitLab Direction page in the Handbook is often beneficial for future-looking product vision questions and discussions about upcoming features
- Optional: Integrations may be loaded and ready to discuss by leveraging the standard demo environments
- Other Existing demo groups and projects are listed in the next section
Repeatable process for maintenance of recording GitLab Flow-style demos
Back in FY23-Q1 we’ve started an OKR to create a repeatable process for maintenance of recording GitLab P2M-style demos, which, in turn, resulted in a followup OKR in FY23-Q3 to Document the repeatable process for maintenance of recording GitLab Flow-style demos.
Setup the demo and environment
All GitLab assets are available in this group, refer to the README for more information on how to Get Started.
GitLab Flow-scenario
We should have a short presentation that acts as an intro and guides our viewers through the demo. This presentation (located in the CS->Demo Script folder in GDrive) could be used as a base for this.
The main flow should be:
- Introduction to the One GitLab Platform
- Highlight of a select number of added capabilities and their value (if possible say thank you to the release MVP)
- Demo of GitLab Flow
Existing Demonstrations
Demo Architect Offerings Handbook page lists currently available shared CS demos, lunch & learns and workshops maintained and owned by Demo Engineering.
In addition, there are various legacy sources and locations that might be helpful in locating reusable demos and projects:
- Demo Catalog Project
- GitLab Examples are used by product groups for feature validation, speed runs, demos, and feature showcasing in docs. The GitLab CI/CD Examples documentation points our customers to these for their own use as well.
- Guided Explorations - has projects for a variety of topics, from language-specific feature flag examples, various DevOps patterns, pipeline tips, tricks, and hacks for windows, and more.
- GitLab CS Tools - group that provides projects for GitLab cs automation and migration tools
- Customer Success Demos - centralized location for demos used by Customer Success, including a set of golden repos for different application types, security demos, and more.
Slide Decks for SA Demos
There are several slide decks stored on google drive that are commonly used for demos. Feel free to make a copy of any of these to personalize for your own needs.
- All the Things - contains a comprehensive set of slides on all GitLab functionality and value propositions
- General Demo.pptx - Product walkthrough deck created and maintained by Cherry Han. Tip: you can make a copy of the deck, then open the deck in Google slides to edit it for your own purposes.
- Demo Prep
Here is the Demo Preparation Roadmap which details the steps to undertake/consider to leverage the Demo2Win strategies before delivering a demo.
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