Iterations
This guide explains how Customer Support Operations uses GitLab iterations to organize and track work in one-week time periods. Iterations help the team manage workload, maintain focus on current priorities, and provide visibility into weekly progress.
Understanding iterations
What are iterations
For Customer Support Operations, iterations are one-week time periods used to group and track issues being actively worked on. Each iteration runs from Sunday to Saturday, helping the team focus on current priorities and providing visibility into weekly workload and progress.
Technically, an iteration is GitLab’s time-boxed workflow feature that groups issues for a specific period. While iterations can be configured for various durations (typically 1-3 weeks), Customer Support Operations uses consistent one-week intervals aligned with our weekly workflow rhythm.
How Customer Support Operations uses iterations
We use iterations to organize our weekly workflow and provide visibility into what work is in progress. Iterations help us:
- Track weekly workload: See what issues are being worked on this week
- Maintain focus: Group related work into manageable time periods
- Plan capacity: Understand team bandwidth and commitments
- Measure progress: Review what was completed each week
- Enable rollover: Issues that aren’t completed automatically move to the next iteration, preventing work from being lost or forgotten
Team members assign iterations to issues during triage or when they begin working on them. This creates a clear view of current priorities and helps prevent work from falling through the cracks.
Automatic issue rollover
If an issue is not closed before an iteration ends (Saturday at 11:59 PM), GitLab automatically moves it to the next week’s iteration on Sunday when the new iteration begins. This ensures work in progress continues to be tracked and doesn’t disappear from the team’s view.
You can prevent automatic rollover for specific issues by removing the iteration before the period ends (if the work is being postponed rather than continued).
Viewing a list of current iterations
To view a list of Customer Support Operation’s current iterations, you would go to this page.
You can click on the iteration time periods shown to review what issues are linked to that time period.
Applying an iteration to an issue
To apply an iteration to an issue, you can either click Edit next to Iteration on the right-side panel of an issue or you can use the iteration quick command.
If you want to use the iteration quick command to apply the current iteration, the specific text to use is:
/iteration [cadence:"Customer Support Operations"] --current
Note: The square brackets are part of the command syntax
Removing an iteration from an issue
To remove an iteration from an issue, you can either click Edit next to Iteration on the right-side panel of an issue or you can use the remove_iteration quick command:
/remove_iteration
Iteration setup
For reference, Customer Support Operations iterations use these settings:
- Title:
Customer Support Operations - Description:
Weekly iteration for Customer Support Operations - Automatic scheduling
- Enable automatic scheduling
- Automatic start date:
2025-04-06(this is the date we setup the iterations) - Duration: 1 (meaning an iteration lasts 1 week)
- Upcoming iterations: 10 (meaning have the current + 9 future iterations available)
- Roll over issues
- Enable roll over
7d49549f)
