Engineering Function Performance Indicators

Executive Summary

KPI Health Status
Engineering Handbook MR Rate Okay
  • Above target
Engineering Team Member Retention Okay
  • above target, constant trend
Engineering Vacancy Time to Fill Attention
  • Trending up
  • Need to coach hiring managers to lean in while recruiting rebuilds

Key Performance Indicators

Engineering Handbook MR Rate

The handbook is essential to working remote successfully, to keeping up our transparency, and to recruiting successfully. Our processes are constantly evolving and we need a way to make sure the handbook is being updated at a regular cadence. This is measured by Merge Requests that update the handbook contents relate to the Engineering Division overtime.

Target: Greater than 0.55 per person per month Health:Okay

  • Above target
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Engineering Team Member Retention

We need to be able to retain talented team members. Retention measures our ability to keep them sticking around at GitLab. Team Member Retention = (1-(Number of Team Members leaving GitLab/Average of the 12 month Total Team Member Headcount)) x 100. GitLab measures team member retention over a rolling 12 month period. This metric definition is taken from the People Success Team Member Retention KPI.

Target: at or above 84% This KPI cannot be public Health:Okay

  • above target, constant trend
URL(s):

Engineering Vacancy Time to Fill

Vacancy Time to Fill measures the average time job openings take from open to close. This metric includes sourcing time of candidates compared to Time to Hire or Time to Offer Accept which only measures the time from when a candidate applies to when they accept.

Target: at or below 50 days Health:Attention

  • Trending up
  • Need to coach hiring managers to lean in while recruiting rebuilds
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Regular Performance Indicators

Engineering Budget Plan vs Actuals

We need to spend our investors’ money wisely. We also need to run a responsible business to be successful.

Target: Confidential, in Adaptive Unknown

  • Data currently lives in Adaptive, not available in Sisense.
  • Waiting on the data becoming available

Diversity

Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging is one of our core values, and a general challenge for the tech industry. GitLab is in a privileged position to positively impact diversity in tech because our remote lifestyle should be more friendly to people who may have left the tech industry, or studied a technical field but never entered industry. This means we can add to the diversity of our industry, and not just play a zero-sum recruiting game with our competitors.

Target: It’s against company policy to set diversity quotas (but we may add benchmarks to compare ourselves against). Health:Attention

  • Engineering is now at the tech benchmark for gender diversity (~16%), but our potential is greater and we can do better. 20% should be our floor in technical roles. Other types of diversity are unknown.
  • Get data wired up and visualized in Tableau.
  • Clear data sharing with legal.
  • Get better data about racial and country diversity.
URL(s):

Merge Requests Types

Distribution of monthly Merge Requests that are categorized into types of feature work. Includes work on; new features, enhancements, maintenance and bug fixes projects that are part of the product.

Target: Unknown

  • Metric has no target and is being monitored
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Engineering Discretionary Bonus Rate

The number of discretionary bonuses given divided by the total number of team members, in a given period as defined. This metric definition is taken from the People Success Discretionary Bonuses KPI.

Target: at or above 10% Health:Attention

  • Metric is new and is being monitored
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Engineering Promotion Rate

The total number of promotions over a rolling 12 month period divided by the month end headcount. The target promotion rate is 12% of the population. This metric definition is taken from the People Success Team Member Promotion Rate PI.

Target: 12% Health:Okay

  • Metric is new and is being monitored
  • On 2021-06-23 People Success received updated industry data. They will be evaluating our data against these benchmarks and adjust our targets as applicable.
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Legends

Health

Value Level Meaning
3 Okay The KPI is at an acceptable level compared to the threshold
2 Attention This is a blip, or we’re going to watch it, or we just need to enact a proven intervention
1 Problem We'll prioritize our efforts here
-1 Confidential Metric & metric health are confidential
0 Unknown Unknown

How pages like this work

Data

The heart of pages like this are Performance Indicators data files which are YAML files. Each - denotes a dictionary of values for a new (K)PI. The current elements (or data properties) are:

Property Type Description
name Required String value of the name of the (K)PI. For Product PIs, product hierarchy should be separate from name by " - " (Ex. {Stage Name}:{Group Name} - {PI Type} - {PI Name}
base_path Required Relative path to the performance indicator page that this (K)PI should live on
definition Required refer to Parts of a KPI
parent Optional should be used when a (K)PI is a subset of another PI. For example, we might care about Hiring vs Plan at the company level. The child would be the division and department levels, which would have the parent flag.
target Required The target or cap for the (K)PI. Please use Unknown until we reach maturity level 2 if this is not yet defined. For GMAU, the target should be quarterly.
org Required the organizational grouping (Ex: Engineering Function or Development Department). For Product Sections, ensure you have the word section (Ex : Dev Section)
section Optional the product section (Ex: dev) as defined in sections.yml
stage Optional the product stage (Ex: release) as defined in stages.yml
group Optional the product group (Ex: progressive_delivery) as defined in stages.yml
category Optional the product group (Ex: feature_flags) as defined in categories.yml
is_key Required boolean value (true/false) that indicates if it is a (key) performance indicator
health Required indicates the (K)PI health and reasons as nested attributes. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI.
health.level Optional indicates a value between 0 and 3 (inclusive) to represent the health of the (K)PI. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI.
health.reasons Optional indicates the reasons behind the health level. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. Should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one reason.
urls Optional list of urls associated with the (K)PI. Should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one url
funnel Optional indicates there is a handbook link for a description of the funnel for this PI. Should be a URL
public Optional boolean flag that can be set to false where a (K)PI does not meet the public guidelines.
pi_type Optional indicates the Product PI type (Ex: AMAU, GMAU, SMAU, Group PPI)
product_analytics_type Optional indicates if the metric is available on SaaS, SM (self-managed), or Both.
is_primary Optional boolean flag that indicates if this is the Primary PI for the Product Group.
implementation Optional indicates the implementation status and reasons as nested attributes. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI.
implementation.status Optional indicates the Implementation Status status. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI.
implementation.reasons Optional indicates the reasons behind the implementation status. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. Should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one reason.
lessons Optional indicates lessons learned from a K(PI) as a nested attribute. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI.
lessons.learned Optional learned is an attribute that can be nested under lessonsand indicates lessons learned from a K(PI). This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. Should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one lesson learned
monthly_focus Optional indicates monthly focus goals from a K(PI) as a nested attribute. This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI.
monthly_focus.goals Optional indicates monthly focus goals from a K(PI). This should be updated monthly before Key Reviews by the DRI. Should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one goal
metric_name Optional indicates the name of the metric in Self-Managed implemenation. The SaaS representation of the Self-Managed implementation should use the same name.
Last modified December 15, 2023: Migrate Engineering ruby code to the new handbook (c8544f4a)
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