Portfolio and headcount planning
Once a year, GitLab Brain plans its portfolio, roadmap and hiring in a single spreadsheet. Each leader starts with the teams they have today and adds the bets they want to make, along with the hires each bet needs. We then rank those hires across the whole org and fund them in that order. This page explains how the spreadsheet works and why we set it up this way. You can view or download the template at the end of the page.
Everything in the template, including the names, numbers and dates, belongs to a made-up AI company. It doesn’t reflect GitLab’s plans, headcount, open roles or financials. Like quarterly planning, the process is public, but our real names and numbers aren’t.
What’s in the spreadsheet
Leaders fill in five tabs, in order, and two more tabs show the results. A bet is an area of work with its own milestones and hires, and each bet gets one row.
| Tab | What you enter | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| 0_Today | Your teams today: who’s on them, how their time splits across four kinds of work, and what you plan to do with each team next year | Work you could stop or scale back to free people up for new bets |
| 1_Bets | Whether to invest in, sustain, harvest or explore each bet, and what slips if it isn’t funded | Each bet’s rank, which comes from its funding order |
| 2_Impact | The main impact, how you’ll measure it and the target | What each bet is worth |
| 3_Roadmap | At least two milestones customers will notice, and the quarter each one lands | A roadmap that shows which milestones are funded |
| 4_Hiring | Approved roles and new requests, each with a location, hiring manager, funding order and the quarter it’s needed | When each hire can start contributing, and which hires fit the budget |
| Dashboard and Bet card | Nothing. These two are read-only | What’s funded, what slips and when people start, for the whole plan or for one bet |
The funding order is one ranking of every new hire across the org, starting at 1. If you’re new to the sheet, read the Start here tab first. The Playbook tab has good and weak examples for each field.
Why we plan this way
We wanted a plan that starts from the work rather than from a headcount request, and one that still holds up when the budget changes. A few choices in the sheet make that possible:
- Hiring needs come from milestones. For each milestone, we look at what it takes to deliver and subtract what the team already has. Whatever is left is the hire.
- We use the people we have first. If a team stops or hands off some of its work, those engineers move to a bet before we ask for anyone new.
- A bet’s rank is set by its funding order, so the priority list and the hiring plan always agree.
- Hires are funded in order until Finance’s budget runs out. Nobody has to negotiate where that line falls, and the Dashboard shows what ends up below it.
- Start dates have to be possible. The sheet works backwards from when a hire needs to be productive to when the role has to open, and it flags any start that’s too early, too late or still waiting on a hiring manager.
- Revenue and savings are counted once. Each revenue or cost line belongs to one bet, and any other bet that helps records its contribution there.
All of this runs on ordinary formulas, so there are no scripts or add-ons to install.
How to use it
If you lead a bet:
- Make your own copy of the template and read the Start here tab first.
- Work through the five tabs in order. Only type in the cream cells, and make sure the starred (★) columns are filled in. The Next step link on each row takes you to the same bet on the next tab.
- When you’re done, look at the Dashboard and the Bet card and fix anything marked amber or red. The last column on 1_Bets shows how far along you are.
Expect it to take about 90 minutes on your own, or one 30-minute working session with the plan owner.
If you own the plan:
- Set up the hidden tabs first: the as-of date, Finance’s budget and cost rates, and the exports from HR and the applicant tracking system.
- Once every leader is done, set the final funding order and work through the data checks.
- Run the planning review from the Dashboard and the Bet card. After the review, approved roles open straight away, new requests that fit the budget go to Finance, and funded milestones move into quarterly planning.
Who does what
| Who | What they do |
|---|---|
| Engineering leaders | Own their bets, fill in the five tabs, suggest a funding order and sign off on the result |
| Engineering managers | Fill in 0_Today for their teams and act as hiring managers |
| Product leaders and product managers | Shape each bet with the engineering leader and sign off on its milestones and targets |
| Plan owner | Sets up the sheet, runs the working sessions, decides the final funding order, and keeps a frozen copy of the funded plan to track hiring against |
| Finance | Sets the budget for new hires, confirms cost rates and reviews each bet |
| Talent Acquisition | Opens the approved roles and runs hiring |
View or download the template
Below is a read-only view of the nine tabs leaders use. You can drag the bottom-right corner to make it bigger.
To work with it, download a copy:
- Download the template (Excel, 1.1 MB). This is a snapshot from November 11, 2026. It needs Excel 2021 or Microsoft 365 because it uses newer functions like LET and FILTER.
- To use it in Google Sheets, upload the file to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets.
The plan owner’s tabs are hidden, but anyone with a copy of the file can make them visible again. Before you put real names or numbers in your copy, share it only with people who are allowed to see everything in it, and check it against the SAFE framework.
1b2b4671)
