[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":796},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/what-makes-a-great-tech-talk":3,"navigation-en-us":38,"banner-en-us":437,"footer-en-us":447,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Brendan O'Leary":689,"blog-related-posts-en-us-what-makes-a-great-tech-talk":704,"assessment-promotions-en-us":746,"next-steps-en-us":786},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":26,"isFeatured":12,"meta":27,"navigation":28,"path":29,"publishedDate":20,"seo":30,"stem":34,"tagSlugs":35,"__hash__":37},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/what-makes-a-great-tech-talk.yml","What Makes A Great Tech Talk",[7],"brendan-oleary",null,"insights",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"what-makes-a-great-tech-talk",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"What makes a great tech talk?","I've compiled some of my favorite tech talks to find out what makes them great.",[18],"Brendan O'Leary","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749670658/Blog/Hero%20Images/data-startup-cognitive-logic-talks-migrating-to-gitlab.jpg","2022-10-04","\n\nAs someone who spends a reasonable amount of time writing, rehearsing, and giving tech talks, I often find folks new to speaking about tech asking me: how do you do it? How do you know that you will be able to write and give an excellent tech talk?\n\nThe simple answer is: I don't know. An excellent tech talk isn't definable and solvable like an engineering problem. It's part tech, part passion, part storytelling, and part luck. But in thinking about speakers and talks that I've looked up to throughout the years, I believe that I've found a few key ingredients in any tech talk that I've seen and would consider \"great.\"  In reviewing these, I actually came to appreciate what I somewhat already knew: the \"tech\" part of the talk is probably the least important part of a great tech talk. Yet, as professionals, that is what we get wrapped around. And it is what worries us when writing a speech. The best demo ever - that's what will save my talk! But in the end, it's not just the tech content that counts, so let's look at the five critical ingredients for a great tech talk:\n\n- Story and narrative\n- Passion\n- Connection to the audience\n- Balance\n- Call to action\n\nFor each ingredient, I've included a talk that best illustrates that principle and a link to the talk. As an aside, every moderately good talk I've ever written was inspired while listening to or after hearing a great talk from one of these amazing technologists. Remember: [good artists copy, great artists steal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6jeZ7m0ycw).\n\n## Story and narrative\n\n[Keynote: Reflections](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiaLsxjBeOQ): **Kelsey Hightower, KubeCon CloudNativeCon North America 2019**\n\nStories are how humans have always learned and taught each other. From the earliest stories around campfires to teach about the dangers of predators or the ways to find food to the modern world where we are bombarded by stories that we now call 'marketing' - stories have always played a pivotal role in learning and teaching.\n\nAnd so, without a story, your audience is already lost. You can show some of the most incredible technology, a fantastic demo, and wow people with statistics...but if there is no connection to the real world - to their lives - then it will go in one ear and out of the other. And the story doesn't have to be complicated - a story is, after all, just a beginning, middle, and an end...maybe a conflict or two. But telling the story - showing how the technology or what you are presenting applies to real people in the real world - is critical to getting your point across.\n\nIt's so critical that some of the best tech talks are only stories. In the \"Reflections\" Keynote at KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2019, Kelsey Hightower - one of the most respected tech speakers known for his impressive and fun demos - didn't even appear to bring a laptop on stage. Speaking from the heart, Kelsey tells the stories of the early days of Kubernetes, of showing inclusion, of practicing intentional inclusion. And with those few simple but powerful stories, the audience is captivated and learns more in 15 minutes about what it means to be an inclusive open source community than they would have with hours of slides of fancy graphics and data.\n\n### More from Kelsey\n\n- [Kubernetes and the Path to Serverless](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNa3xK2GFKY)\n- [Kelsey Hightower's Best Live Demo Yet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6SfRPwTKqo)\n- [TechExplorers: Kelsey Hightower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OHNejqXOoo)\n- [HashiConf 2017 Keynote](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v77FFbQwC6E)\n\n## Passion\n\n**[Zebras All the Way Down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE2KDzZaxvE): Bryan Cantrill, Uptime 2017**\n\nStories will help you make your talk more personal - both for you and the audience. But that won't carry much weight for long if you don't have passion for the stories and how they apply to the problem and solution you're trying to present. For the audience to stay engaged throughout the talk, they need to care about what you are talking about. And if it isn't clear from your speech, word choice, and energy that you are passionate about your topic, there is no way your audience will come along with you and care about what you have to say.\n\nNo one will ever accuse Bryan Cantrill of not being passionate. And in his talk \"Zebras All the Way Down,\" he brings that passion to advocating for one's own healthcare to understand at a deep level how our systems are impacted by the various layers of software. And that includes a lot of software we don't think about like that below the operating system. Turning a personal story about his physician father and his sister who had a rare condition into the way to think about solving hard debugging problems, Bryan brings the audience along. He makes you care about what he has to say...even if what he's talking about is far removed from your daily work.\n\n### More from Bryan\n\n- [Debugging Under Fire: Keep your Head when Systems have Lost their Mind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30jNsCVLpAE)\n\n- [Corporate Open Source Anti-patterns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8P4oCIY3g)\n\n- [Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc)\n\n## Connection to the audience\n\n**[Why Open Source Firmware is Important](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUTx61t443A): Jessie Frazelle, GOTO 2019**\n\nOnce you've brought your whole self to the talk - your stories and your passion - you still need to ensure your audience will be engaged and want to hear about those things from you. To do that, you have to build a connection with your audience. The way to do this may seem simple on the surface, but it does actually take some effort. You need to understand at least two things about your audience: who they are and why they showed up to your talk.\n\nFirst - who is your audience? You have to understand who they are - what are their roles professionally? What is their experience like personally? What makes them passionate, and what are their stories? Understanding your audience will help you shape your talk to match their interests with your passions - a surefire method for success.\n\nSecond - why did they show up to your talk? You've already won a little bit here - they came to the conference or meetup, they saw your abstract and maybe a little bit about you, and chose to come to hear what you had to say. That should give you confidence that the audience wants you to succeed just as much as you want. Think for yourself: have you ever shown up to a tech talk hoping the speaker would bomb? Probably not. So that's half of the battle won already, but you can't take it for granted. They showed up expecting to learn or get something out of your talk. You need to think about how they apply what they want out of it and then deliver.\n\nA great example is Jessie Frazelle's talk at GOTO Chicago in 2019 on \"Open Source Firmware.\" On the surface, it might not seem like a great example - Jessie even has a disclaimer at the beginning of the talk. She's \"forcing\" an audience of software engineers to get a few rings lower than they are comfortable - down into the  UEFI kernel, management engine, and other low-level firmware pieces. But Jessie's passion for this part of the stack and showing the audience how it directly applies to how we all build software with many abstraction layers above the firmware is offered throughout the talk. Jessie convinces the audience to care about the software turtles all the way down. Along the way, she teaches about the stack of code we don't know about...and the rings of trust below \"0\" and the kernel.\n\n### More from Jessie\n\n- [Breaking Containers: Chaos Engineering and Kubernetes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhVS4pdrrk)\n\n- [Benefits of isolation provided by containers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKDupfKu_Mw)\n\n- [Container Hacks and Fun Images](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYsVvV1aVss)\n\n## Balance\n\n**[The Art of Code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U): Dylan Beattie, NDC London 2020**\n\nOnce you've got your audience bought in - and know what you're going to tell them and why - you've got to write the talk. Until now, not much has been focused on that. There are a lot of methods out there for outlining, writing, and structuring your speech. Far too many, in fact, for me to get into here. And that's not my goal - there is a one-size-fits-all method for creating a great tech talk. Much like many technical problems, the answer to \"how should I structure this thing\" is \"it depends.\" However, the best tech talks I've ever seen strike a balance - a balance of the tech and the stories, learning and entertainment, questions and answers.\n\nThis balance boils down to balancing the \"three S's of a great tech talk\":\n\n_Style_\n\n_Substance_\n\n_Stories_\n\nEven though one of these S's (stories) repeats one of our early items, I think that only serves to express how important it is to a great talk. You must tell a story. But unless you're giving a keynote at a conference where you're the most respected person in the room (shoutout to Kelsey Hightower), the stories won't always be the whole package. In most tech talks, folks are coming to learn something about technology or how humans interact with technology - so bringing substance is essential. You have to prove you know what you're talking about and that it matters to your audience.\n\nBut, as we've discussed already, that substance can't be just dry numbers on a chart or some other way to present cold unconnected data. While that is often the business of any serious engineering endeavor, a presentation on stage is more than that. You must also bring style - charisma, humor, fun visuals, and passion - all ways you can make sure style is balanced with the substance of your talk. Sure, some have a lot more style than others - but those with no style are the ones that are quickly forgotten.\n\nPerhaps one of the best speakers when it comes to this balance is Dylan Beattie. In \"The Art of Code,\" Dylan takes us through various elements - from maths to retro computing to programming Fizz Buzz as an 80's hair ballad, complete with guitar playing and singing from Dylan. However, Dylan balances the exciting talk style with the stories he wants the audience to hear. And he sprinkles in the substance about how we as technologists have a responsibility to the world...and need to not take ourselves too seriously.\n\n### More from Dylan\n\n- [Fractals, Factories and Fast Food](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs1DWYrw2Ps)\n\n- [Architecture: The Stuff That's Hard to Change](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LtQWxhqjqI)\n\n- [Ctrl-Alt-Del: Learning to Love Legacy Code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPjHuvulivM)\n\n## Call to Action\n\n**[Why work doesn't happen at work](https://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work/transcript?language=en): Jason Fried, TEDx Midwest**\n\nThis last key - a meaningful call to action - is the one I struggled the most to name. As they say, there are only two hard things in software development: naming things, cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors. The connotation behind \"call to action\" may come off at first as sounding too \"sales and marketing\" like many software engineers. But that connotation does not impact the importance of a call to action. Using the strictest definition of the word, it is a vital part of your talk.\n\nAs we discussed, your audience came to your talk, hoping for you to succeed. They've now sat through you talking \"at\" them for 15, 25, 45 minutes or more. So the call to action is not for you - it's not self-serving like a sales pitch. Your call to action at the end of your talk should be your gift to the audience. It should be about them, not about you. It should give them concrete next steps they can take to positively impact what you were talking about in their own lives, organization, or world. This call to action is what you want the audience to remember, and the best tech talks are also the most memorable.\n\nAnd they don't have to be about tech at all even. In Jason Fried's TEDx talk \"Why work doesn't happen at work,\" Jason presents the main ideas around how we've become accustomed to working together are broken...and, more importantly, offers concrete ways to fix them. And while those calls to action are simple, they also go to the heart of Jason's story and passion: making it less crazy at work by freeing up people to do their best work with time and space.\n\n## What's next?\n\nSo, given that you've come this far, I hope I've shared my passion for great tech talks with you. Hopefully, that passion is shared, and you've found a new way of thinking about your own talks. So what is my gift to you for having come this far? Well, it's going to sound like an oversimplified call to action, but I'm telling you it's exactly what you should do:\n\n**Go give a talk!**\n\nYour unique stories are valuable. You are passionate about things that others should care more about. There are audiences out there - in meetups, small events, or large conferences  - that want to hear what you have to say and will be rooting for you when you get up in front of them. All that's left is to strike a balance between those stories and substance with some of your own personal style to make it exciting and engaging.\n\nSo go forth, and write that talk. 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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":28},{"text":687,"config":688},"Privacy",{"href":512,"dataGaName":513,"dataGaLocation":455},[690],{"id":691,"title":692,"body":8,"config":693,"content":695,"description":8,"extension":26,"meta":699,"navigation":28,"path":700,"seo":701,"stem":702,"__hash__":703},"blogAuthors/en-us/blog/authors/brendan-oleary.yml","Brendan Oleary",{"template":694},"BlogAuthor",{"name":18,"config":696},{"headshot":697,"ctfId":698},"","brendan",{},"/en-us/blog/authors/brendan-oleary",{},"en-us/blog/authors/brendan-oleary","IkXVLft77WlFK-Vgo210ZM3Io_PCcrXnYzkBCzx153k",[705,720,733],{"content":706,"config":718},{"title":707,"description":708,"authors":709,"heroImage":711,"date":712,"body":713,"category":9,"tags":714},"How we overhauled GitLab navigation","Users weren't getting what they needed from our navigation. Here are the steps we took to turn that experience around.",[710],"Ashley Knobloch","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749682884/Blog/Hero%20Images/navigation.jpg","2023-08-15","\nGitLab navigation was complex and confusing - that was the message we received from our users through issues and other feedback channels. Initially, to address these concerns, we conducted research around proposed solutions, but quickly found they wouldn't help users achieve their goals well enough to warrant implementing them. In the process of learning what wasn't working and what wouldn't work, we still didn't have clarity around *why* the navigation wasn't working. This article chronicles our journey to finding that clarity and developing navigation that is easier to use and better suited to our users' needs.\n\n## Our approach\nAs a first step, we reviewed past research and user feedback to ensure we had a solid understanding of what we had done and learned already. We found that we still needed more insight into why proposed changes weren’t receiving enough positive feedback to implement them.\n\nOur goals were straightforward:\n- understand what users are doing in GitLab\n- study how they navigate the platform\n- learn why they need certain navigation elements\n\nOur perspective shifted from validating proposed solutions to going back to revalidate the problems that exist with our navigation experience. Our hypothesis was that with a deeper understanding of our users’ behavior and mental models for how they navigate around GitLab, we could develop concepts to better match their needs and improve their overall experience.\n\nThe scope of features in GitLab and the number of user personas across GitLab made this challenging. We have [16 personas](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/product/personas/#user-personas) to represent different types of users, all with unique goals and techniques to achieve those goals. We focused our efforts on a subset of those personas that best represented usage across GitLab to ensure a holistic understanding of different user needs. We wanted to learn how navigation among different personas was similar and where it differed, what worked well with the current navigation, and what challenges users faced.\n\n## Studying key persona cohorts\nWe conducted [diary studies](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/product/ux/ux-research/diary-studies/) with cohorts of our key personas to learn what their primary tasks and workflows were at a deeper level. This provided us with many real-world examples of how they navigate to their tasks and why. We also learned what worked well with their current workflows, what pain points existed, and what workarounds were being used (such as creating browser bookmarks, typing in the URL to pull browser history, or keeping a bunch of browser tabs open) to streamline their tasks in GitLab.\n\nWe learned that for some users, many of their primary tasks don’t require much navigation within GitLab because they use outside tools that link into GitLab through notifications (e.g., Slack and email) or use direct links through other tools. We also learned that often users’ work is quite scoped in GitLab, and they would like easier access to some of their core features without having to wade through all of the other features they don’t use. This illuminated some unmet needs that would improve their workflows, such as having the ability to customize navigation to access things important to them more quickly and streamline their path to relevant projects.\n\nLearning more about our users from a foundational perspective ensured that we had a solid base to build upon when considering changes to the navigation.\n\n## Anchoring to a North Star\nTo anchor the redesign process in user problems more broadly, a review of past feedback was analyzed that revealed three overarching themes with navigation-related feedback. These themes helped to guide the process and to remind us of the key problems we were trying to solve:\n- minimize feeling overwhelmed (ability to customize left sidebar)\n- orient users across the platform (differentiating groups and projects)\n- pick up where you left off (switching contexts)\n\nThe team continually mapped back design concepts to these themes to ensure potential solutions were rooted in user problems.\n\n## Evaluating and iterating\nNext, several navigation design concepts were developed and shared with users for feedback. Multiple rounds of [solution validation testing](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/product/ux/ux-research/solution-validation-and-methods/) were conducted with our key personas to determine which design concepts to move forward with. The testing revealed how users felt about each design and also how well each design supported users completing core tasks. We identified a final concept that supported mature and new GitLab users with common workflows.\n\n## Understanding mental models for sidebar organization\nWe wanted to revisit our groupings in the left sidebar because we’ve heard over time that the organization can be confusing and unintuitive, especially some categories such as Operations. We needed to understand our users’ mental models for how they would group these items, and why. Learning the thought processes behind their organization was critical for us to know what changes to make that would align with user expectations.\n\nWe ran facilitated [card sort](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/product/ux/ux-research/mental-modeling/#card-sorting) studies with our key personas to understand how they would group items in the left sidebar, and why. This helped us learn some areas that could benefit from readjusting, such as the Manage and Operate categories. We learned that users most often preferred to have analytics items together, for example, which is reflected in the Analyze tab. This insight, combined with patterns in analytics data, informed changes to the groupings in the left sidebar to better support workflows.\n\n## Launching and learning\nPrior to launching to external users, the new navigation was released to internal team members and we collected [feedback](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/403059) to help iterate and improve the experience.\n\nNext, we launched the new navigation to external users as a toggle that could be turned on optionally. During this initial launch, a [longitudinal study](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/product/ux/ux-research/longitudinal-studies/) was conducted with a sample of GitLab users to learn how they experienced the change in the context of their real work. Over time, the study would provide insight into adoption among the entire user base.\n\nWe interviewed users prior to the monthlong study to learn more about their experience with the existing navigation. Then, they began using the new navigation while completing surveys and participating in interviews at checkpoints in the beginning, middle, and end of the month. This enabled us to capture their initial impressions of the new navigation, what they liked/disliked, how the new experience compared to the previous one, and if their sentiment changed over the course of the month as they continued to use the new navigation.\n\nUsers in this study found the new navigation to be an improvement from the previous one, and most preferred its features, including:\n- the ability to pin items streamlined common workflows\n- the new task-based sidebar categories in the sidebar, which they said felt more approachable, especially for newer users\n- the new navigation changes, which they said weren’t too overwhelming and felt familiar\n\nWe also learned about some opportunities to iterate and improve the new experience. For instance, some users pointed out:\n- the inability to pin entire Projects, Groups, or specific pages makes it difficult to streamline other workflows\n- some users unpin items accidentally\n- the overall lack of color can cause some features to blend in or be missed\n- it's not always easy to know what’s new in GitLab\n\n## What’s next: Iterate, listen, and iterate again\nTo capture large-scale feedback on navigation over time, we launched a new navigation-focused quarterly survey in Q1 (February) of this year. This first quarter data established a baseline of our old navigation, and beginning in Q2 (May), we began collecting data on the new navigation experience. We will monitor this closely, and look for themes to help us learn what is working well and what may need further iteration.\n\nThis survey, along with our longitudinal study feedback and various other user feedback sources, will provide insights to help prioritize iterative improvements to the new navigation experience. Stay tuned for changes, and keep sharing [your navigation feedback](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/409005) with us!\n",[715,716,717],"inside GitLab","UX","research",{"slug":719,"featured":12,"template":13},"navigation-research-blog-post",{"content":721,"config":731},{"title":722,"description":723,"authors":724,"heroImage":726,"date":727,"body":728,"category":9,"tags":729},"Beautifying our UI: Giving GitLab build features a fresh look","Get an inside look at how we are improving the usability of GitLab build features with multiple visual design improvements.",[725],"Veethika Mishra","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749682807/Blog/Hero%20Images/beautify.jpg","2023-07-05","\n\nThe current technical landscape is completely different from what it was this time last year. As the software development industry is busy evolving its understanding of _automating early and often_ in the presence of new AI capabilities, we have been focused on feature work. However, it's equally important to make sure we are adapting our UI to match up to the experience and addressing, where necessary, the misalignment between the two.\n\nIn a scaling product, where issues are competing to be prioritized, it might feel convenient to tackle the next feature issue as opposed to focusing on small visual design improvements. Advocating for the value that a small visual design change in isolation brings to the product is never easy for all the practical reasons, and this is where [the \"Beautifying our UI\" initiative](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/product/ux/product-design/#beautifying-our-ui) becomes useful at GitLab. It allows a product designer and a frontend engineer to voluntarily pair up, like we did, and make self-directed improvements to the usability of GitLab.\n\nWe collaborated on many pipeline-related features in the past three years. As our responsibilities pulled us in different directions, we had to put many of our aspirational plans for improving the presentation of CI/CD features in GitLab on hold in favor of other more important things.\n\nHowever, once those were addressed, we decided to volunteer for a session of Beautifying our UI in the 16.1 milestone. To make the most of a single milestone, we began preparing a couple months in advance, soliciting ideas from team members and getting the design proposals ready in [an issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/394768/). After a quick prioritization exercise to understand which of the suggested improvements would be most meaningful to our users, we made a number of contributions to the product.\n\nHere are some of those contributions:\n\n### Improvement to pipeline detail page\nIn the process of troubleshooting a failing pipeline, users often have to visit their detail page for better insight into what's causing the failure. The top of the page previously had a table with all the metadata around that pipeline. Over the years, a lot of information was added to this table but the layout was never optimized to accommodate that information, which in return impacted the usability of the page. The page headers were also very different from other examples found in GitLab.\n\nBy critically looking at every piece of information displayed on the page, we made informed decisions using the qualitative insights and the usage data at hand to completely redesign the pipeline header.\n\n![image of pipeline detail page before](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/Beautifying-of-our-ui-16-1/pipeline-detail-before.png)\nBefore\n\n\n![image of pipeline detail page after making changes](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/Beautifying-of-our-ui-16-1/pipeline-detail-after.png)\nAfter\n\n\nThis work was substantial and while we did our best to avoid any negative impact to our users, we realize there might be a few issues. Please share your comments in this [feedback issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/414756) about the redesign and we'll prioritize addressing them.\n\nRedesigning the pipeline header came with a few technical challenges because a lot of the code was a mix between HAML and Vue. We had to slowly refactor the pipeline header over to Vue/GraphQL to allow our code to be more performant and maintainable. It’s pretty much like building a completely new feature — we had to get creative with passing data to the Vue app from Rails.\n\n### Harmonizing badges and link styles on pipeline list view\nThe pipeline index page (list view) is one of the most visited pages in GitLab because users need to make sure any failing pipelines are identified quickly for troubleshooting. Since there's a lot going on on this page, it is critical that the UI leads users' attention to the right areas. Previously, almost every link presented in the pipeline column had a different visual treatment, which made the page visually noisy and harmed the usability and scannability of the information. Our goal was to remove anything that isn't required and harmonize the visual language so it is easy for CI/CD users to perform their jobs effectively.\n\n![image of pipeline detail page before](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/Beautifying-of-our-ui-16-1/pipeline-index-page-before.png)\nBefore\n\n\n\n![image of pipeline detail page after making changes](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/Beautifying-of-our-ui-16-1/pipeline-index-page-after.png)\nAfter\n\n\n### Linking runner number to runner admin page\nTo allow easy management of runners across an instance, we've now provided easy access to the runner admin page right from the job detail page. Previously a static test, now the runner number can directly take users with the runner admin page where they can make changes to the specific runner's configuration.\n\n![image of cancel pipeline label](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/Beautifying-of-our-ui-16-1/runner-link-from-job-logs.png)\nLinking runner admin page from job logs page\n\n\n### Improving tooltips and button text\nThe tooltips on the jobs list view were using native browser tooltips. We've changed those to use a design-system-compliant tooltip for consistency and better readability.\n\nWe gathered some useful feedback on the usability of the button labels and took this as an opportunity to improve a few of them. Here's one example where we changed the label text for the button for canceling a running pipeline from **Cancel running** to **Cancel pipeline** and added an appropriate tooltip to clearly communicate the action.\n\n![image of cancel pipeline label](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/Beautifying-of-our-ui-16-1/cancel-pipeline-label.png)\nButton with new label text\n\n\n## More to come\nWe are not stopping with this list! We will continue our partnership to bring in more visual and usability improvements to the continuous integration area in the coming months. If you are interested in taking a look at the complete list of changes we have made and the ones we still plan to make, [you can find the issue here](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/394768/).\n\n\n",[716,730],"design",{"slug":732,"featured":12,"template":13},"beautifying-of-our-ui",{"content":734,"config":744},{"title":735,"description":736,"authors":737,"heroImage":739,"date":740,"body":741,"category":9,"tags":742},"4 best practices leading orgs to release software faster","GitLab's 2023 Global DevSecOps Survey illuminates the strategies that organizations deploying more frequently have in common.",[738],"Kristina Weis","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749663908/Blog/Hero%20Images/2023-devsecops-report-blog-banner2.png","2023-06-08","\nReleasing software faster is one of the biggest goals of many organizations — and for good reason. It helps them keep up with competitors, land and keep more customers, improve employee satisfaction, and much more. But maintaining that velocity requires investment in processes and technologies that help DevSecOps teams deliver, secure, and deploy software faster without compromising quality.\n\nIn our [2023 Global DevSecOps Survey](https://about.gitlab.com/developer-survey/) we asked more than 5,000 development, security, and operations professionals about everything from deployment frequency to the practices teams have adopted – all to learn what the most agile and efficient organizations have in common. One respondent, a director of IT security in the retail sector, summed up the challenge as follows: “Software customers are increasingly vocal and demanding, expecting faster releases and greater customizability. Developers will need to keep up with these demands while still maintaining stability and usability.”\n\nSo what’s helping organizations be more productive and efficient? Here are four of the best practices that, according to the survey, help organizations release software faster and deploy more frequently:\n\n## 1. Running applications in the cloud\nOne of the benefits people commonly attribute to deploying to the cloud is increased development speed. As it turns out, this year’s survey shows there’s some serious truth to that. Respondents with at least a quarter of their applications in the cloud were 2.2 times more likely to be releasing software faster than they were a year ago — and respondents with at least half of their applications in the cloud were 4.2 times more likely to deploy to production multiple times per day.\n\nSeveral respondents commented on the value of the cloud while also acknowledging the complexities cloud computing can bring to software development. An IT operations manager in the industrial manufacturing sector shared that “developing software that is designed for the cloud-native environment” is one of the top challenges facing software development this year. Likewise, an IT operations manager in the telecommunications sector said: “With the increase in the use of cloud computing and IoT devices, there is a greater need for secure coding practices to protect sensitive data from cyber attacks.” As organizations move to a cloud-first model for software development, they will need to adopt technologies that allow them to build natively in the cloud while keeping security top of mind throughout the development process.\n\n## 2. BizDevOps\nThough DevOps and DevSecOps mostly steal the show in terms of methodologies, some organizations go a step further and [practice BizDevOps](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/a-snapshot-of-modern-devops-practices-today/) — that is, incorporating business teams alongside development, security, and operations teams. An IT operations manager in the software sector emphasized the importance of collaboration with the business, sharing that “as software projects become larger and more complex, developers will need to work closely with other team members, including designers, testers, project managers, and business stakeholders.” This approach appears to be paying off for some: Respondents whose organizations practice BizDevOps were 1.4 times more likely to be releasing software faster than they were a year ago.\n\n## 3. CI/CD\nIt’s not surprising that automating the software development lifecycle with [CI/CD](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/) would help teams release software faster and more efficiently; however, it’s nice to see confirmation and put some numbers to the difference it can make. The survey shows that respondents [practicing CI/CD](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/how-to-keep-up-with-ci-cd-best-practices/) were twice as likely to deploy multiple times per day and 1.2 times more likely to release software faster than they did a year ago.\n\nDespite the value of CI/CD for driving efficiency, respondents also identified challenges. For instance, an IT operations associate in the aerospace/defense sector pointed to “management that doesn't understand CI/CD at all” as a blocker to more efficient software development. Meanwhile, a software development intern in the biotech sector shared that “tools to automate CI/CD, together with code editors, APM software, and defect trackers, can help with a faster and quality development cycle,” but “companies are hesitant to spend on tools that can help increase their developers’ productivity.” These responses underscore the value of investing in tools that unify CI/CD with other DevSecOps practices — such as incorporating security early in the development process and creating tighter feedback loops — to help organizations break down development silos.\n\n## 4. DORA and other metrics\nOrganizations that [make a conscious effort to track key development metrics](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/how-zoopla-uses-dora-metrics-and-your-team-can-too/) are more likely to improve them, according to the survey. This makes sense because by virtue of an organization choosing to track a metric, they’re signaling to their teams that it’s important, likely reminding them of whether the metric is improving (or not) periodically, and quite possibly prioritizing initiatives aimed at improving those metrics. We found that respondents whose organizations track their [DORA metrics](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/dora_metrics.html) and other similar metrics were 1.4 times more likely to deploy multiple times per day.\n\n## A deeper dive on productivity and efficiency\n\nFor a deeper look into release velocity and deployment frequency, and all the practices that made respondents more likely to release software faster and deploy multiple times per day, check out our [2023 DevSecOps Report: Productivity & Efficiency Within Reach](https://about.gitlab.com/developer-survey/).\n\nThe report also digs into two other key factors that can have a big impact on productivity and efficiency: how long it takes to onboard new developers and how difficult or easy it is for organizations to attract, hire, and retain developers. We’ll show you where things stand and the practices that made respondents more likely to be successful.\n\n_[Read the highlights from “Security Without Sacrifices,” the first report in our 2023 Global DevSecOps Report series.](/blog/gitlab-survey-highlights-wins-challenges-as-orgs-adopt-devsecops/)_\n",[743,107,562,554],"developer survey",{"slug":745,"featured":12,"template":13},"best-practices-leading-orgs-to-release-software-faster",{"promotions":747},[748,762,774],{"id":749,"categories":750,"header":752,"text":753,"button":754,"image":759},"ai-modernization",[751],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":755,"config":756},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":757,"dataGaName":758,"dataGaLocation":242},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":760},{"src":761},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":763,"categories":764,"header":766,"text":753,"button":767,"image":771},"devops-modernization",[765,557],"product","Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":768,"config":769},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":770,"dataGaName":758,"dataGaLocation":242},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":772},{"src":773},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":775,"categories":776,"header":778,"text":753,"button":779,"image":783},"security-modernization",[777],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":780,"config":781},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":782,"dataGaName":758,"dataGaLocation":242},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":784},{"src":785},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":787,"blurb":788,"button":789,"secondaryButton":794},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":790,"config":791},"Get your free trial",{"href":792,"dataGaName":49,"dataGaLocation":793},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":493,"config":795},{"href":53,"dataGaName":54,"dataGaLocation":793},1772652093472]