[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":793},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/dont-hide-primary-actions":3,"navigation-en-us":37,"banner-en-us":437,"footer-en-us":447,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Daniel Mora":689,"blog-related-posts-en-us-dont-hide-primary-actions":703,"assessment-promotions-en-us":744,"next-steps-en-us":783},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":25,"isFeatured":12,"meta":26,"navigation":27,"path":28,"publishedDate":20,"seo":29,"stem":33,"tagSlugs":34,"__hash__":36},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/dont-hide-primary-actions.yml","Dont Hide Primary Actions",[7],"daniel-mora",null,"unfiltered",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"dont-hide-primary-actions",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"Don't hide primary actions","In our testing, we found there was confusion in setting up subgroups with a wide range of research participants. We wanted to reduce confusion in setting up subgroups in GitLab.",[18],"Daniel Mora","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749663397/Blog/Hero%20Images/logoforblogpost.jpg","2021-04-01","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\n\n\u003C!-- ![Image of Batman stroking his chin in contemplation](https://media.giphy.com/media/a5viI92PAF89q/giphy.gif){: .shadow.right.wrap-text} -->\nOrganizing your projects into groups within GitLab should be a simple matter for new users. We conducted a Category Maturity Scorecard validation to see how we were correct to assume that it was easy to model your organization in GitLab so that teams could have clear boundaries between other groups. What we found during our initial testing, however, was far off from this assumption.\n\n### Problem\nLooking at this organization chart, we assumed our test participants would have no trouble creating this structure in a test environment.\n\n[![](https://mermaid.ink/img/eyJjb2RlIjoiZ3JhcGggVERcbiAgQVtJbmZvcm1hdGlvbiBUZWNobm9sb2d5IGFuZCBEYXRhIEFuYWx5dGljc10gXG4gIEEgLS0-IEVbSVQgRGlnaXRhbCBTZXJ2aWNlc11cbiAgRSAtLT4gRltEaWdpdGFsIFRyYW5zZm9ybWF0aW9uIEVudmlyb25tZW50XVxuICAgIEYgLS0-IE1bUHJvamVjdCBBbHBoYV1cbiAgICBGIC0tPiBOW1Byb2plY3QgQmV0YV1cbiAgICBGIC0tPiBPW1Byb2plY3QgQ29yZV1cbiAgRSAtLT4gR1tBcHBsaWNhdGlvbiBEYXRhYmFzZSBTZXJ2aWNlc11cbiAgRSAtLT4gSFtCdXNpbmVzcyBQcm9jZXNzIE1hbmFnZW1lbnRdXG4gICBIIC0tPiBQW1Byb2plY3QgWmV0YV1cbiAgIEggLS0-IExbUHJvamVjdCBCbGFua10iLCJtZXJtYWlkIjp7fSwidXBkYXRlRWRpdG9yIjpmYWxzZX0)](https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid-live-editor/#/edit/eyJjb2RlIjoiZ3JhcGggVERcbiAgQVtJbmZvcm1hdGlvbiBUZWNobm9sb2d5IGFuZCBEYXRhIEFuYWx5dGljc10gXG4gIEEgLS0-IEVbSVQgRGlnaXRhbCBTZXJ2aWNlc11cbiAgRSAtLT4gRltEaWdpdGFsIFRyYW5zZm9ybWF0aW9uIEVudmlyb25tZW50XVxuICAgIEYgLS0-IE1bUHJvamVjdCBBbHBoYV1cbiAgICBGIC0tPiBOW1Byb2plY3QgQmV0YV1cbiAgICBGIC0tPiBPW1Byb2plY3QgQ29yZV1cbiAgRSAtLT4gR1tBcHBsaWNhdGlvbiBEYXRhYmFzZSBTZXJ2aWNlc11cbiAgRSAtLT4gSFtCdXNpbmVzcyBQcm9jZXNzIE1hbmFnZW1lbnRdXG4gICBIIC0tPiBQW1Byb2plY3QgWmV0YV1cbiAgIEggLS0-IExbUHJvamVjdCBCbGFua10iLCJtZXJtYWlkIjp7fSwidXBkYXRlRWRpdG9yIjpmYWxzZX0)\n\nSadly, this was not the case:\n- Five test participants could not complete the task in 30 minutes.\n- One confused the difference between Groups versus Projects but could (inaccurately) recreate the structure in GitLab in approximately 3 minutes.\n- Only one person was able to complete the task accurately in around 3 minutes.\n\n\u003C!-- ![Image of a young woman cringing](https://media.giphy.com/media/3FBwwRCNTSa52/giphy.gif){: .shadow.center} -->\n\n### Observations\nThe primary problem we found was that our participants could not find a way to create a subgroup. Success depended on creating subgroups, but the button to create a new subgroup was not easily discoverable. The participant would have to go into exploratory mode and click to see what was in the 'New project' dropdown to find it. This problem with button dropdowns and primary action discovery also occurred within the [Comment button in Merge Requests](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/49614).\n\n![Image of dropdown button](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/2021-04-15-dropdown-button.png){: .shadow.center}\n\nThe second observation was that the user experience and logic of building an organizational system are not intuitive for new users. \n\nParticipants expected:\n- A more graphical user experience with interactive boxes and lines\n- A way to perform the task through the command line\n- A way to import the org structure from another system\n\nParticipants could not determine the difference between a group or a project or how they were related. There was no visual indicator of what the difference was or what features related to Groups or Projects.\n\n### Solution proposals\nFor an initial recommendation to address the confusion, we wanted to separate the primary dropdown button.\n\n![Image of 3 seperate buttons](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/2021-04-15-split-button.png){: .shadow.center}\n\nHiding features under dropdowns assumes the users understand they can access additional actions if they click the button's dropdown area. As well, two disparate interface actions shouldn't juxtapose if they have no direct relationship.\n\nWe assumed that we could split up this button into two for an MVC and have better results. After another round of testing, we were able to achieve far better results. Our test participants completed the task of creating the group and project structure quickly and found the task easy to complete.\n\n### This one simple trick\nBy breaking apart the 'New project' and 'New group' buttons, we could make the 'New group' action discoverable. After we made this change, participants had no trouble interpreting the scenario and executing the task within 5 minutes.\n\n\u003C!-- ![image of a young man dancing](https://media.giphy.com/media/3o7abldj0b3rxrZUxW/giphy.gif){: .shadow.center} -->\n\n### Next steps\nCurrently, we are looking at how we can improve sharing groups and features. We want to [remove the barrier between groups and projects](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/2885). We believe that this will help with some of the problems users have with sharing across groups, and they will be able to take advantage of features that provide them with a more connected set of groups. 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statement",{"items":679},[680,683,686],{"text":681,"config":682},"Terms",{"href":507,"dataGaName":508,"dataGaLocation":455},{"text":684,"config":685},"Cookies",{"dataGaName":517,"dataGaLocation":455,"id":518,"isOneTrustButton":27},{"text":687,"config":688},"Privacy",{"href":512,"dataGaName":513,"dataGaLocation":455},[690],{"id":691,"title":18,"body":8,"config":692,"content":694,"description":8,"extension":25,"meta":698,"navigation":27,"path":699,"seo":700,"stem":701,"__hash__":702},"blogAuthors/en-us/blog/authors/daniel-mora.yml",{"template":693},"BlogAuthor",{"name":18,"config":695},{"headshot":696,"ctfId":697},"","dmoraberlin",{},"/en-us/blog/authors/daniel-mora",{},"en-us/blog/authors/daniel-mora","60Gvio9kDG9B5_msrqZf39FGjqA7Ot2jacr-AOb-djA",[704,715,730],{"content":705,"config":713},{"title":706,"description":707,"authors":708,"heroImage":710,"date":711,"body":712,"category":9},"CEO Shadow Takeaways from Jacie","Recap of my experience in the CEO Shadow Program.",[709],"Jacie Bandur","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749664102/Blog/Hero%20Images/gitlab-values-cover.png","2021-05-18","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\nHi! I’m Jacie Bandur. I completed GitLab’s CEO Shadow program from 2021-04-26 through 2021-05-07. It was a really enlightening experience. I generally work in Learning and Development and consider myself a lifelong learner. I can’t even explain how much I learned in such a short about of time. I learned a lot about the business. I learned a lot about the product. But learned even more about the importance of iteration in everything we do.\n\n### Qualifications to Participate\n\nI wanted to start this off with touching on qualifications to participate in the program.\n\nI am the type of person that has gone through most of my life thinking I’m not qualified for things. I’m not qualified for that job, that promotion, that program. The list goes on and on.\n\nWhen I saw the [CEO Shadow program](/blog/ceo-shadow-impressions-takeaways/) kick off in 2019, I really wanted to participate. I was a little intimidated. Who wouldn’t be, spending 2 weeks with the CEO of any company? But time passed and all the sudden it was 2021 and I had not taken any steps to participating in the program.\n\nIf you are sitting there waiting for someone to tell you that you are qualified to participate in this program, I’m not big on giving “pep talks,” but here’s me telling you - You are qualified for this program. There’s never going to be a good or perfect time to do it. Tell your manager you want to do the CEO Shadow program. Stop waiting. Sign up today.\n\nNote: Take a look at the [eligibility](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/ceo/shadow/#eligibility) section of the CEO Shadow page for more information on signing up.\n\n### Pre-Program Tips\n\nThere are many things recommended for shadows to do pre-program outlined on the CEO Shadow handbook page. As I was going through the program there were things that I thought helped me (or would have helped me).\n\nHere are my top 6 recommendations:\n\n1. Make sure your team knows you will be unavailable for 2 weeks. This isn’t a program that can or should be done alongside your normal day to day work. I found catching up from the 2 weeks away kind of difficult because I was trying to keep up on what was going on and I had a bunch of half done things.\n1. Talk with people who have done the shadow program - schedule at least 3 coffee chats with CEO Shadow Alumni.\n1. Have food that is easy to eat quickly. Sid’s meetings are back to back most days, so you will have small amounts of time to eat throughout the day. Sid does eat during calls, which you are welcome to do, too, but if you are taking notes, it is difficult to eat. And this will make you realize why speedy meetings are so important!\n1. Listen to the [Executive Leadership LinkedIn Learning course](https://www.linkedin.com/learning/executive-leadership/).\n1. Be prepared to ask questions. When doing the program virtually, there isn’t a ton of time for asking questions, so when one would come up, I would add it to a note on my computer and ask if there was ever time with just the shadows and Sid.\n1. Take at least 1 day off after the program. Take even a couple of days off if you can! This is recommended on the handbook page, but I can’t stress this enough.\n\n\n### Takeaways\n\n**Group Conversations**\n\nI’ve been at GitLab for almost 4 years. When I joined, I made it a point to attend as many GC’s as I could. I had gotten out of the habit of attending Group Conversations. After attending them again for 2 weeks, I realized how important they are to understand better what is going on across the business. Everything in the organization is so intertwined. It’s helpful to understand what other teams are working on and succeeding in.\n\n**Feedback**\n\nWe should all be giving and receiving feedback often. We have a whole [handbook page on giving and receiving feedback](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/guidance-on-feedback/). Read the handbook page and watch the videos, as well. Practice giving feedback. I recommend using the [1-1 agenda](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/1-1/suggested-agenda-format/) Sid uses, because Feedback is an essential piece of that agenda, and it makes feedback more of a routine thing.\n\n**Biggest Takeaway**\n\nWe have an incredible team here at GitLab, from Engineering to Product to Sales to People and all the groups in between. There are so many great ideas. I observed the constant reinforcement by Sid to start with something small and build on it. You can ALWAYS make something more complex. It’s hard to go back to something more simple when you start with something complex.\n\nA couple of quotes that I heard from Sid during the program that reinforced this point:\n\n- “Every complex system evolves from a simple system that worked.”\n- “It’s very clear what is the simple solution. We can always make it more complicated as we go on.”\n\nI know they are very similar, but they happened in different meetings on different days, so the point was reinforced repeatedly.\n\nDuring the program, I reflected on the projects that I’am working on. How many of them am I trying to do too much on before releasing. Probably all of them. When I’m working on projects in the future, I will break them down into smaller, more doable chunks. Iteration is hard - it’s a skill to be practicing constantly.\n\n\n### Overall\n\nOverall, the program was really insightful and impactful. If you haven’t participated in it yet, I cannot encourage you enough to do so!\n",{"slug":714,"featured":12,"template":13},"ceo-shadow-recap",{"content":716,"config":728},{"title":717,"description":718,"authors":719,"heroImage":721,"date":722,"body":723,"category":9,"tags":724},"Why I love contributing to GitLab","Making small meaningful changes is what it's all about.",[720],"Austin Regnery","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749679501/Blog/Hero%20Images/new-feature.png","2021-05-11","It was mid-morning on a Tuesday in February, and I had 10 minutes in between meetings. So I decided to try and solve a pain point of mine.\nYou see, I had to memorize this HTML snippet to create a collapsible section in GitLab Issue descriptions and comments, but I kept forgetting it. Was it `summary` or `section`? I could never remember.\n```html\n\u003Cdetails>\n\u003Csummary>Insert Title\u003C/summary>\nHidden content\n\u003C/details>\n```\nEven though it is not vanilla Markdown, GitLab knows how to interpret some HTML. I used this formatting trick fairly often since full-page screenshots can occupy a lot of screen space, which leads to excessive scrolling.\nSo I decided to poke around our codebase to see how the other Markdown shortcuts worked. To my surprise, it was pretty straightforward. Each shortcut had a simple text input that mapped to each button. This implementation was simple to replicate since I just needed to copy/paste and replace a few words.\n![Image of Vue and Haml files with editor shortcuts](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/vue-haml.png){: .shadow}\nThe Vue and Haml files with the new shortcut\n\nI started a branch and began hacking away at the code. Now, I would never call myself a Software Engineer, but I like to try and make things from time to time. I was able to add a new shortcut to the toolbar to insert this code snippet for me in less than 10 minutes. No more memorizing! Making contributions like this is what makes working at GitLab so special.\nNow, it wasn't ready for production, but I at least had something that worked. I shared it with my UX colleagues in Slack, and it started to gain traction with several up-votes and few constructive comments on how to make it better.\nWith the functionality flushed out, a few other designers helped me get a better icon added to our SVG library. Using clear iconography is critical for communicating information more clearly.\n| Initial Icon | Final Icon |\n| - | - |\n| ![SVG of chevron right icon](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/chevron-right.svg) | ![SVG of details block icon](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/details-block.svg) |\n\nThe last thing to do was resolve my failing tests, and I had several teammates help me do that.\n![Gif of the shortcut being used](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/demo.gif)\n\nToday [this change](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/54938) merged! Now I solved a pain point for me and others. It took a few months to go from idea to production, but the effort was super low. I'd say the return on my initial investment, 10 minutes, is super high.\n> Having a direct impact on a product was never an option for me before joining GitLab.\n\n![Image of participants in the Merge Request](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/participants.png)\n\n\nThank you to everyone that helped me deploy this\n",[725,726,727],"UX","product","AWS",{"slug":729,"featured":12,"template":13},"why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab",{"content":731,"config":742},{"title":732,"description":733,"authors":734,"heroImage":736,"date":722,"body":737,"category":9,"tags":738},"Placebo Lines on the Pipeline Graph","Have you noticed the connecting lines missing on your pipelines lately? Here's why",[735],"Sam Beckham","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749679507/Blog/Hero%20Images/ci-cd.png","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\n\nHave you ever pressed the close door button on the elevator, in the hope that you'll save a few precious seconds?\nOr got frustrated at the person stood next to you at the cross-walk, neglecting to press the button?\nWell, maybe they know something you don't, or perhaps you know this already.\nMany buttons in our society lie to us.\n[David McRaney](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/10/placebo-buttons/) dubbed these, \"Placebo buttons\" and they're everywhere.\nThose elevator doors won't close any faster and the cross-walk button has no effect on the lights.\nThe only lights they control are the lights on the buttons themselves.\nThey give you the feedback you crave, but that's all they're doing.\n\nThese placebos aren't constrained to the physical world, they're prevalent in [UI design](/blog/the-evolution-of-ux-at-gitlab/) too.\nFrom literal placebo buttons like [YouTube's downvote](https://www.quora.com/Does-downvoting-a-comment-on-YouTube-even-do-anything), to more subtle effects like Instagram always [pretending to work](https://www.fastcompany.com/1669788/the-3-white-lies-behind-instagrams-lightning-speed), or progress bars that have a [fixed animation](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-some-apps-use-fake-progress-bars/517233/).\nThey're everywhere if you know where to look.\n\nAt GitLab, we created a placebo of our own in one of our core features; the pipeline graph.\n\nThose of you who have used our pipeline graph, will be familiar with its appearance.\nThere's a series of jobs, grouped by stages, connected by a series of lines depicting the relationships between the jobs.\nBut these lines might be lying to you.\nThese lines are indiscriminately drawn between each job in a stage, regardless of their relationship.\nThese lines are placebos.\n\n![The old pipeline rendering with lines connecting every job in a stage](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_old-graph.png)\n\nThis wasn't a problem to begin with.\nA basic pipeline has several jobs across a handful of stages.\nJobs in each stage would run parallel to each other, but each stage would run sequentially.\nIn the image shown above, all the jobs in the test stage would trigger at the same time. Once those jobs had finished, all the jobs in the build stage would trigger.\nWe used rudimentary CSS to draw lines connecting each job in one stage to each job in the next.\nThese lines weren't calculated based on their connections, but still reflected the story they were telling.\n\nSince the introduction of `needs` relationships in [v12.2](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/issues/47063), pipelines got a bit more complicated.\nNow you could configure a job in a later stage to trigger as soon as a job in an earlier stage completed.\nLooking at our old example, we could set the API deployment to run as soon as our spec tests passed.\nThis skips the remaining tests and the entire build stage, turning our lines into pretty little liars.\n\nWe had many internal discussions about these lines, and how to show the relationships between jobs.\nThere's the [`needs` visualization](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/directed_acyclic_graph/#needs-visualization), which does an excellent job of displaying these relationships, but the main pipeline graph was still inaccurate.\nFor the past few months, we've been [refactoring the pipeline graph](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/276949), giving it a new lease of life and fixing some of its issues along the way.\nOne of those issues were the faked lines.\nIn the new version, we can accurately draw lines between jobs.\nLines that actually depict the relationships jobs have with each other.\nNow the lines no-longer lie!\n\n![The newer pipeline graph showing the correct needs links between jobs](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_new-graph.png)\n\nThe above image shows an unreleased version of the pipeline graph.\nYou can see the lines drawn between the jobs to show that the `deploy:API` job can start as soon as the `rspec` job is successful.\nSomething the old lines (shown earlier in this post) would have been unable to depict.\n\nOne unfortunate downside of this is that these lines can be quite expensive to calculate.\nThey're actual DOM nodes, drawn deliberately and placed precisely.\nOn smaller graphs this isn't a problem, but some of our initial tests have found pipelines with a potential 8000+ job connections.\nThat kind of calculation would grind the browser to a halt, and nobody wants that.\n\nAt GitLab, we believe in boring solutions.\nWe make the simple change that sets us on the path towards where we want to be.\nShip it, get feedback, and iterate.\nSo that's what we did.\nIn the first phase of this rollout, we shipped the new pipeline graph with no lines connecting the jobs.\nWe don't have to worry about the expensive calculations, and we still get to roll out the refactored pipeline graph.\n\n![The current (v13.11) pipeline graph showing no links between jobs](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_current-graph.png)\n\nWe know some of you will miss them, but fear not.\nBoring solutions are just technical debt if you don't iterate on them.\nSo the [improved lines are coming](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/4509) in a future release, along with several other improvements to the pipeline graph.\nWe're already starting to roll out the new [Job Dependencies](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/298973) view which shows the jobs in a (much closer to) execution order.\nStay tuned for more updates, and watch [Sarah Groff Hennigh Palermo's talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2EKqKjB7OQ) for the technical side of this effort and a deeper dive into some of the decisions we made.\n",[739,740,741,23],"CI","frontend","agile",{"slug":743,"featured":12,"template":13},"placebo-lines-on-the-pipeline-graph",{"promotions":745},[746,760,771],{"id":747,"categories":748,"header":750,"text":751,"button":752,"image":757},"ai-modernization",[749],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":753,"config":754},"Get your AI maturity 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