[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":791},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/journey-to-the-outer-loop":3,"navigation-en-us":37,"banner-en-us":437,"footer-en-us":447,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Kenny Johnston":687,"blog-related-posts-en-us-journey-to-the-outer-loop":701,"assessment-promotions-en-us":742,"next-steps-en-us":781},{"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/journey-to-the-outer-loop.yml","Journey To The Outer Loop",[7],"kenny-johnston",null,"unfiltered",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"journey-to-the-outer-loop",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"Journey to the Outer Loop","A space journey from Earth to a world where Product Managers don't exist",[18],"Kenny Johnston","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749665839/Blog/Hero%20Images/devops.png","2021-01-20","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\n\n🚀 Your DevOps journey, like any good space journey, spans vast distances. As your space captain, I’m here to remind you, we have a long way to go. DevOps by its continuous improvement definition isn’t a one stop destination. Today, in the true spirit of continuous improvement we’re rightly focused on our immediate next step along the journey. The next steps involve familiar friends - our fellow technical professionals who design, code, test, secure, deploy and operate software.  On our space journey they are our local solar system - they’re Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These planetary neighbors are concentrating on improved feedback and collaboration amongst each other.  We’re optimizing the efficiency of software creation. We’ve even built complete teams to perform this integrated activity holistically. That is DevOps culture! \n\nThat is also just the beginning of DevOps. In DevOps we call this solar-system collaboration the Inner Loop. The important feedback loop that brings us confidence in the technical abilities of our software. Think of things like reliability, scalability, observability, velocity. Those are critical abilities to keep up with our competition, ship software faster and accelerate. This inner loop is about efficiency, are we using the right build strategy? Continuous improvement of our inner loop is possible today using collaboration concepts like continuous integration, continuous deployment, [DevSecOps](/topics/devsecops/) as well as pipelines, infrastructure and observability as code. \n\n![Inner Loop](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/2021-outer-loop-journey/inner_loop.png)\n\nThere is, somewhere beyond our solar-system, a galactic Outer Loop. In this Outer Loop we gain confidence in the value capabilities of our product. Imagine things like usability, adoptability, stickiness and competitiveness. This outer loop is about effectiveness, are we building the right things? These capabilities do more than just enable us to keep up with the competition and deliver value to our users - they are the measures of whether we are doing so. This is the next step in DevOps!\n\n![Outer Loop](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/2021-outer-loop-journey/outer_loop.png)\n\nI’m going to take you on a journey to this Outer Loop - what it looks like today, what constellations of tools are available for it, and what a more complete Outer Loop could look like. Buckle up!\n\n#### What it looks like today\n\nIn today’s mostly uncharted Outer Loop - the space is disorganized at best. Ask most modern software development organizations and they will tell you they are struggling to integrate tools to enable this feedback loop. An organization who has figured out their inner loop thanks to CI/CD  is now struggling with how to get feedback to the teams. Today DevOps teams are:\n* Using Progressive Delivery techniques such as canary deployments and feature flags to perform some A/B or hypothesis testing\n* Struggling to connect quantitative feedback in the form of user data into actionable insights from the loop\n* Collecting qualitative user feedback in the form of NPS scores, user research, feature requests in disparate silos with limited access\n* Filtering feedback through a single individual’s brain, typically a product manager, in order to process it for prioritization\n* Lacking understanding of the efficiency of the types of feedback they receive\n* Stitching together multiple tools to try to ensure feedback gets into the right hands\n\nSome of the tools for various parts of this outer loop are:\n* Collection - Survey Monkey, MiPanel, Heap, Chorus.ai, NPS, Support Tickets\n* Analysis - Qualtrics, Pendo.io, Gainsight\n* Insights - Dovetail\n* Prioritization - Aha!, Trello\n\n#### Constellation of Tools\n\nToday’s Outer Loop is a bit like an alien world. We don’t yet have the tools to organize and make sense of it. What would happen if we did?\n\nAn effective Outer Loop - one built for optimizing outcomes for our users - would easily allow for the kinds of activities sought by Product Managers. Activities like lean product delivery, hypothesis testing, and prioritization frameworks. In fact - if you gave these tools to the real value creators - engineers, testers, designers, operators - you wouldn’t need Product Managers! \n\nImagine, beyond our solar-system a world where there were no Product Managers. Feedback is collected and tools readily available for the creators to analyze it.  That feedback includes qualitative and quantitative feedback from users, buyers and competition not just about what the product does today - but what it could do tomorrow. The creators iterate on a prioritization framework that is continuously improved. They ship experiments and have tools which empower them to designate an experiment a success. If successful they can rapidly promote an experiment. The primary input - which should be evident already - is a business goal. \n\n#### Are we there yet?\n\nThe reality is, this future world isn’t far off. Product focused DevOps teams have these point solutions at their disposal today. What they are missing is many of the same qualities that teams struggled within in the Inner Loop: A common platform to perform these activities that didn’t reinforce silos and create significant effort to stitch disparate tools together.\n\nAs one of the leading Value Stream Delivery Platforms - this is exactly where Gitlab is headed. We’re focused on completing the Galactic Outer Loop for you! Imagine a world where investment decision wasn’t subjective, ad-hoc, single tracked, and not data-driven! Imagine, no product managers! I’d invite you to [collaborate with us on that vision](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/299315). 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inclusion and belonging (DIB)",{"href":663,"dataGaName":664,"dataGaLocation":455},"/diversity-inclusion-belonging/","Diversity, inclusion and belonging",{"text":329,"config":666},{"href":331,"dataGaName":332,"dataGaLocation":455},{"text":339,"config":668},{"href":341,"dataGaName":342,"dataGaLocation":455},{"text":344,"config":670},{"href":346,"dataGaName":347,"dataGaLocation":455},{"text":672,"config":673},"Modern Slavery Transparency Statement",{"href":674,"dataGaName":675,"dataGaLocation":455},"https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/legal/modern-slavery-act-transparency-statement/","modern slavery transparency statement",{"items":677},[678,681,684],{"text":679,"config":680},"Terms",{"href":507,"dataGaName":508,"dataGaLocation":455},{"text":682,"config":683},"Cookies",{"dataGaName":517,"dataGaLocation":455,"id":518,"isOneTrustButton":27},{"text":685,"config":686},"Privacy",{"href":512,"dataGaName":513,"dataGaLocation":455},[688],{"id":689,"title":18,"body":8,"config":690,"content":692,"description":8,"extension":25,"meta":696,"navigation":27,"path":697,"seo":698,"stem":699,"__hash__":700},"blogAuthors/en-us/blog/authors/kenny-johnston.yml",{"template":691},"BlogAuthor",{"name":18,"config":693},{"headshot":694,"ctfId":695},"","kencjohnston",{},"/en-us/blog/authors/kenny-johnston",{},"en-us/blog/authors/kenny-johnston","QrcGXUqTi09ocWHb4i4y8NQljaE8Vl8-Ga3etcioOh0",[702,713,727],{"content":703,"config":711},{"title":704,"description":705,"authors":706,"heroImage":708,"date":709,"body":710,"category":9},"CEO Shadow Takeaways from Jacie","Recap of my experience in the CEO Shadow Program.",[707],"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":712,"featured":12,"template":13},"ceo-shadow-recap",{"content":714,"config":725},{"title":715,"description":716,"authors":717,"heroImage":719,"date":720,"body":721,"category":9,"tags":722},"Why I love contributing to GitLab","Making small meaningful changes is what it's all about.",[718],"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",[723,24,724],"UX","AWS",{"slug":726,"featured":12,"template":13},"why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab",{"content":728,"config":740},{"title":729,"description":730,"authors":731,"heroImage":733,"date":720,"body":734,"category":9,"tags":735},"Placebo Lines on the Pipeline Graph","Have you noticed the connecting lines missing on your pipelines lately? Here's why",[732],"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",[736,737,738,739],"CI","frontend","agile","design",{"slug":741,"featured":12,"template":13},"placebo-lines-on-the-pipeline-graph",{"promotions":743},[744,758,769],{"id":745,"categories":746,"header":748,"text":749,"button":750,"image":755},"ai-modernization",[747],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":751,"config":752},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":753,"dataGaName":754,"dataGaLocation":241},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":756},{"src":757},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":759,"categories":760,"header":761,"text":749,"button":762,"image":766},"devops-modernization",[24,555],"Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":763,"config":764},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":765,"dataGaName":754,"dataGaLocation":241},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":767},{"src":768},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":770,"categories":771,"header":773,"text":749,"button":774,"image":778},"security-modernization",[772],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":775,"config":776},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":777,"dataGaName":754,"dataGaLocation":241},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":779},{"src":780},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":782,"blurb":783,"button":784,"secondaryButton":789},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":785,"config":786},"Get your free trial",{"href":787,"dataGaName":48,"dataGaLocation":788},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":493,"config":790},{"href":52,"dataGaName":53,"dataGaLocation":788},1772652094432]