Security Compliance Team

Epic hierarchy

The our team top-level epic is simply a SSOT for status updates for epic assignees / directly responsible individuals (DRIs). The immediate child epics get a seccomp-roadmap label to appear in our epic board and effectively constitute our roadmap.

1. Sub-epics group tasks required to deliver an item mentioned
2. Sub-epics represent an item from the roadmap and are delivered in a specific phase
3. Sub-epics can span multiple months, but their end date should match the ‘anticipated completion date’ of the roadmap phase they are added to.

The diagram below shows an example of traversing the complete hierarchy:

graph TD
A(Security Compliance top-level epic) --> B(SOC 2 Type 2 attestation)
B --> C([Epic])
B --> D([SOC 2 Type 2 Gap Assessment for GitLab.com])
B --> E([Expand SOC 2 TSC scope to include Availability criteria])
C --> G([Sub-epic])
E --> H([Q1 Continuous Control Monitoring])
E --> I([Q1 CCM: GitLab.com backend])
B --> F([...])
E --> J([...])
G --> K([Issue 1])

Epic assignee responsibilities

Each epic has a single DRI who is ultimately responsible for delivering the project. This does not mean they are doing all of the work, rather they are ensuring the work is progressing, blockers are quickly addressed or escalated if needed, and reporting on the status each week.

The DRI needs to:

1. Work with others to move issues through the boards, for example, moving from triage to in progress to complete
2. Ensure epic and any nested child epics and issues are using the appropriate labels
3. Ensure the epic meets criteria outlined in epic structure (next section)
4. Provide status updates on the epic each week including accomplishments, what’s next, overall health status, and any blockers

Epic structure

Each immediate child epic under our top-level team epic must include the following (adjust quick actions as necessary):

## Background

## Objective

## Exit criteria
- [ ]

/label ~"FY26-Q1" ~"seccomp-function::gap assessments"  ~"seccomp workflow::triage" ~"team::security compliance" ~"seccomp-roadmap"
/health_status on_track
/set_parent &289

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<!--DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE-->

<!--STATUS NOTE START-->

<!--STATUS NOTE END-->

The bottom status note comments at the bottom are important as this is what is used to automatically post status updates to these epics and the team epic.

Epic meta data to include

1. Assignee is the DRI which should be populated whenever an epic moves to seccomp workflow::in progress
2. Start date is set to the expected start date, and updated to be the actual start date when the project begins
3. Due date is set to be the expected end date
   1. The due date is set based on the Roadmap
   2. The date that a project actually ended is taken from the date that the epic was closed
4. Health status should be kept updated (on track, needs attention, at risk)

Labels are described in the Labels section.

Roadmap

All epics and issues are set with due dates according to the official roadmap.

Process to update epic due dates / roadmap items:

1. After the end of each month Security Compliance management reviews the epic (expected) due dates and works with epic assignees / DRIs to determine any roadmap changes if an epic extends beyond the epic’s planned phase.
2. Management then determines roadmap adjustments so that planned work in future phases remains realistic after shifting open work.
3. Roadmap changes are shared in the next weekly sync.

Status updates

We leverage automation to ensure team members only need to provide a status update once and management only ever has to go to one place to review it. This has historically been a big problem at GitLab with epics and issues spread across various subgroups and projects.

The status for all work relating to the Security Compliance roadmap is maintained in the description of the top-level team epic so that it is visible at a glance.

Weekly status update process

DRIs should provide weekly updates for the DRI’s epics according to following process:

1. Every Thursday afternoon the epic assignee / DRI of active epics (anything that is not seccomp workflow::triage) will get @mentioned in a comment on the epic asking them to reply with a status update.
2. By 17:00 UTC / 12:00 PM ET on Fridays DRIs of active epics (or the person covering if DRI is OOO) provide an update in the status section of the description of the epic regarding status of the epic including any relevant details of child epics and issues.
   • If the DRI for a child-epic is different than the epic DRI, the epic DRI is responsible for getting updates from the child-epic DRI.
     • Format for weekly update should be a brief update (~sentence or couple bullets) for each of these three items:
       • Progress since last update - Changes deployed to production, unblocked blockers, any other progress achieved.
       • Risk and Confidence - Any new blockers identified or existing blockers that persist? Any other challenges now or in the near future? How do these blockers and/or challenges affect our confidence of completing by scheduled due date per the roadmap?
       • Mitigations - What is required to overcome challenges or blockers identified? Should this be escalated to other team members, teams, executives, or domain experts?
   • Update Workflow and Health label - After each status update, the workflow label and health status should be updated. See the SecComp Team Issue Tracker Readme for details on label structure.
3. Top-Level Epic Status Update automation periodically synthesizes updates from the DRI’s status update reply comment to automatically populate their epic with the status and the top-level team epic.
4. In order to ensure efficiency we will use these same status updates across any other department, division, or OKR status updates, to include broadcasts in Slack.

Backlog refinement

Prior to the start of a new quarter, the team will spend time refining the epic backlog. This process will be led by the team Manager, who will go through the epics targeted for the upcoming quarter according to the roadmap and ensure each epic contains the following information (pulling in different stakeholders to help fill in the details as necessary):

• Background (e.g. provide context and the purpose of this work, what is it and why is it relevant?)
• Objective (SMART goal explaining the plan/solution: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound)
• Exit criteria (break down the work into smaller, logical chunks and highlight dependencies and predecessors)

When the above information is being added, the Epic will move from Triage to Ready status. The goal is to start each quarter with our planned roadmap items for that quarter in the Ready list.