Managing Commitment

Background

Teams and individuals are often asked / requested to work on multiple efforts, across the company. For example,

• An event, needs booth branding or messaging
• A campaign, needs positioning/messaging and perhaps a gated white-paper
• A new whitepaper or infographic needs design input
• A campaign, needs a customer case study
• A team wants an analyst inquiry

While it is possible to use issue assignments or labels to track simple tasks and assignments, in an organization of scale, there are challenges.

1. Any individual can be assigned to an issue. There no a built in mechanism to manage or moderate assignment of a person to work on an issue.

2. If labels are used to indicate a team is responsible for contributing to an issue, there is no current mechanism or process to manage adding a team label to an issue.

These two limitations make planning and managing a team’s commitments to tasks and work a challenge.

Solution - Commitment management

Use a project issue and workflow to consistently capture requests and manage commitments. Effectively a simple and efficient request-issue that enables a request to be made, and a process to answer the request.

Commitment Management overview

1. Simple request issue (defined by an issue template)
2. A simple set of predefined workflow steps (using GitLab scoped :: labels)
3. The team/leadership that receives the request manages the process and takes action

The typical actions/responses to a request

• a. Backlog - the request is acknowledged, but not actively worked right know
• b. Assigned - the request is accepted and someone from the team is DRI for the worked
• c. Transferred - the request has been shifted to a different team
• d. Declined - the request is not accepted
• e. Canceled - the request was canceled
• f. Completed - the request is done and delivered

The typical workflow for a request

graph TD
    A(["New Request 📥"]):::Open --> B(["Backlog 🤔"]):::Open
    B --> C(["Assigned 🦊"]):::Open
    C --> D["Completed 👌"]:::Close
    A --> E["Transferred 🚚"]:::Close
    A --> F["Declined 🛑"]:::Close
  C --> G["Canceled 😕"]:::Close
  B --> G

  classDef Open fill:#D8BFD8, stroke: #333
  classDef Close fill:#c4d3d9, stroke: #333

graph LR
  subgraph legend["Legend"]
    GG(["Open Issue"]):::Open -.- PP["Issue Closed"]:::Close
  end
classDef Open fill:#D8BFD8, stroke: #333
classDef Close fill:#c4d3d9, stroke: #333
style legend fill:#FBFBF2, stroke: #b0b0a9

Labels define the process

There are two key labels that allow a team to define and manage the process:

1. A project label that tags all issues in the process for example sm_request - is the Product and Solution Marketing label for all requests. Need to explore the potential of these being common group level labels (shared across projects).

2. A set of scoped labels that define the workflow. Here is the list of labels from the Product and Solution Marketing workflow:

• sm_req::New
• sm_req::Backlog
• sm_req::Assigned
• sm_req::Completed
• sm_req::Declined
• sm_req::Transferred
• sm_req::Canceled

Typically - you would replace the “sm_” with the team initials.

Important Note: Managing a process like this based on labels, can create overhead in keeping everything in the right status. Expecting everyone to memorize all labels and right steps might be a challenge. It is possible to automate rules/policies that will either automatically close issues, add a label, etc. Learn how to automate label hygiene

An Issue Template Starts the process

Using an issue template helps to consistently define the process and make it easy to get started.

• Issue Templates can also be directly linked to via a URL which makes it easy for a person requesting help to quickly open an issue template.

For example this URL will open a Product and Solution Marketing Request:

• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/product-marketing/issues/new?issuable_template=A-SM-Support-Request The key is the end of the URL new?issuable_template=A-SM-Support-Request which tells GitLab to open a specific template!

The issue template, both describes the information that is needed to understand and prioritize the work, but also includes Quick Actions to assign specific labels. At the bottom of the strategic marketing template there are the following quick actions to add labels:

/label ~"sm_request" ~"Product and Solution Marketing" ~"sm_req::new_request" ~"mktg-status::plan"

How Commitment Management Works

1. A person leading a project, campaign, event, or whatever needs help from a team.
2. They open a request issue and provide the background
3. A DAILY Process - The team (leaders or the team in general) triages the New Requests and decides how to respond. (backlog,assigned, transferred, declined)
4. When the request is actually assigned to a team member, the label req::assigned is applied and the individual is assigned to the request issue.
5. The assigned individual does the work. (Either in the request issue, or in the project where the request originated - depending on what makes the most sense.)
6. When the work is done, the issue is labeled req::completed (the SM Triage Bot automatically closes completed issues)

sequenceDiagram
    Requestor->>+Team: Can you support this
  participant Requestor
    Note right of Requestor: ::new_Request
    Team->>Team: What is the priority of this request?
    participant Team
    Note right of Team: ::Backlog
    Team->>-DRI: Here is an item to work on!
    participant Team
    Note right of Team: ::Assigned
  DRI-->>Requestor: I'm working on it
  DRI->>Requestor: I'm Done
      participant DRI
    Note right of DRI: ::Completed

Guidelines

To manage commitment, use a commitment tracking issue

Just adding a label or tagging another person is NOT the same as a commitment!

1. Create a commitment tracking process (scoped labels, issue template, and team processes)
2. Apply the process to capture and manage the team’s work. As a principle - if there isn’t an accepted and assigned request issue, then there isn’t a commitment.
3. Manage requests, build and curate a backlog, assign and deliver work.