GitLab Learning & Development, 23 Mar 2021

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From YouTube: Manager Mention MRs - L&D Sessions

Description

GitLab L&D and Sid, GitLab CEO and Co-Founder, discuss Manager Mention Merge Requests during a CEO Handbook Learning Session.

Manager Mention MRs: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/#scaling-merge-requests-through-manager-mention-mrs-formerly-consolidated-mrs

CEO Handbook Learning Session: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/learning-initiatives/#ceo-handbook-learning-sessions

A

B

Oops, so I think we are live um hi everyone. My name is josh zimmerman, I'm here with uh with gitlab learning development, I'm here with sid c brandy, our co-founder and ceo and simon our internal communications manager, to talk about gitlab's, unique way of communicating and today we're going to be diving deep on the topic of manager. Mention merge, request so sid. Thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it for organizing josh awesome. So let's start off real quick. You know. Why does everything start with a merge request.

A

Yeah at get library handbook first, so our handbook contains everything that we do. We've learned that if we don't have a central place to describe things, we get multiple sources of truth, which means that they're, outdated and the way to keep it up to date is to make sure that every change is communicated by changing the handbook. Documentation can never be an afterthought, so anytime we communicate a proposed change. It's like hey. This is how we intend to modify the handbook.

A

It has a ton of advantages, not only keeping the handbook up to date, but also making sure that you can kind of review the changing context like what pages are changing. What else is on those pages.

B

Got it so everything starts with a merge request. That's how we, you know, defined how we work at gitlab, and you know I'm curious. You know how do we scale merge requests across the organization.

A

Yeah what we used to do is we opened up the merge request and everyone just left comments and the author of the merger quest should comment back and that works for 99 percent of all merge requests at gitlab.

A

The problem is that there's some merge requests that are where people have more questions, they're more contentious, and what happened is that that author would get overwhelmed by all the communication coming in, so it didn't work and what people started doing is like not use, merge, requests anymore, because there'd be too many comments and that doesn't work because then the handbook is not up to date and we got all the all kinds of other problems.

A

So what we realized is that, as an organization grows for now 1300 people, part of the job of management, is also to help with change management to help with communication and what we don't want to lose at gitlab. Is everyone can contribute? That's our mission, so we don't want to say hey, you cannot. You cannot say anything anymore, most companies, it's not like a change is proposed and then anyone can comment on it. It's like well. This is just a new policy. uh This is how it is.

A

So we want to keep that, like everyone can make a suggestion.

A

But we want to make sure that it doesn't fall on the author of the merge request to enter everything because otherwise it's it's unworkable.

B

Yeah, I agree, and I love the point around change management too, because I think you know, as get lab, continues to scale and grow. We're gonna see a lot of changes over the next few years that are gonna require a lot of change management.

A

Yeah changes your you have more people affected, so it's gonna going to be more work and with the manager mention a methodology. When people have suggestions, they ask their manager and their manager does kind of a triage like. Oh you misunderstood something or oh. This is super simple. Let me make a suggestion to dmr or like hey, um I don't know either I'm gonna ask my manager, and so it can percolate up and uh more and more people. It's it's a scalable way like even at um suppose we're a million people.

A

Even at that thing at that size managers will not have more than like 10 reports most of the time. So you can answer the questions of 10 people. You just can't answer them over a thousand or 10 000 people.

B

Yeah, that's that's a really good point, so I'm curious, you know, have we added manager mentioned mrs before, and you know what did what did we learn from from doing that.

A

Yeah, um we recently had a first try and we learned two things. First of all, we need to train people in the expectations both kind of the people asking the questions and the people answering it so to simplify. Let's say that individual contributors are asking questions.

A

What we saw is that people, instead of asking a question, they kind of posted, something and then just cc their manager. The idea is that it's really the manager they're talking to, but in in a public forum, and so we've got to change that understanding and then the managers need to understand that hey now, change management suddenly has become part of your role. It's not enough to like plus one a comment. It's like you have to dive into it figure it out.

A

Maybe summarize it even better, maybe come up with a suggestion and uh where relevant kind of manage uh mention uh your manager for the for the next step.

B

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I see you know just the enablement piece around change management really being supported by the manager mentioned. Mrs.

A

Yeah- and we also learned that, like look it's nice, if you ask managers to be able to to do this, but they have to be briefed in the matter beforehand, so we need to roll out a change differently where it's first kind of the author to maybe e-group e-group, to all directs all directs to their reports all the way to the last, the first line managers.

A

So if, if we don't have the managers kind of understand the content and be able to relate to it and ask their questions, they cannot, we cannot expect them to handle questions from their reports. So there's now kind of a sequence to rolling this out, and I think in a in a ton of other companies like change management is only like. Well, this is the change and we're going to tell you what it is: we're going to educate you and you're going to roll it out at getlab.

A

We also want to make changes to the change in the response to to the questions and concerns, and I think that's a very complex challenge and that's why we're trying to make a process for it.

B

Yeah, that's a really great point. I think um you know change management works really! Well, when you have you know the support from your leaders up and down the organization um like all manager levels and all all team members you know, and so I'm curious, you know what is a manager's role in a manager mentioned mr and scaling communication.

B

A

So their role is to kind of three hours and do next step, so they get mentioned and then there's a lot of possibilities. It might be good to hop on a call with the team member. It might be good to make a suggestion like if it's just a clarification, it might be good to link to some additional contents without changing the merge request.

A

It might be good to delete a comment because it was wildly inappropriate and it should have a word with that with the with the team member. It might be good to escalate immediately to the author or something like that, because there's something like fundamentally wrong and it's time sensitive. So there's a wide scope of actions and, most of the time it's going to be either explaining it. If there was a if the concern is reasonably addressed or to kind of work towards like rephrasing the concern making it tighter and working working on possible mitigation.

B

That makes a lot of sense, and- and I think with that you know, I think um team members have a responsibility and a role as well. So you know what is the team members role in a manager mentioned, merge request.

A

Yeah, I think um the what a manager. What an mr is? Not it's, not a poll. So it's not it's not a. Please all give your opinion. It's like hey, give.

A

Ask questions give suggestions on how to improve it and if, if there's, uh if it doesn't make sense, either try to find data that that makes your that helps with your argument.

B

Yeah, that's a great point um and- and you know I'm curious, you know when when should we expect to see manager mention, mrs, as part of you know, a company announcement.

A

Yeah um so far, the most contentious things have to do with kind of employment of people, and it makes total sense because all these things are near and dear to everyone's heart, so things to do with compensation policy benefits, career opportunities, those tend to get the most questions. The ones where, like the author, gets overwhelmed, that is totally legitimate but um and that's where we'll have have to uh probably most use these uh manager mentioned, mrs uh to make sure that doesn't happen.

B

Yeah yeah yeah people are, you know, I think, that living our transparency value in full effect, they're very, very passionate about a lot of the topics that we discuss and have company announcements around yeah.

A

And I think this is not about transparency like we could easily just make, and I have a bot that deletes every comment and then we're still transparent, but you just can't give back. I think this is about our mission of everyone can contribute like how do we? How do we channel those contributions in a way that don't overwhelm the author of dmr?

A

um So I think this is much more about much more than transparency. It's about open core and everyone can contribute.

B

Yeah, that's a great point. Well, you know. Thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else. You would like to add just around this topic of manager. Mention, mrs, that we didn't touch on today.

A

I'm sure we'll learn more as we do the next few manager mentioned in mrs. So looking forward to that for sure.

B

Well, thank you so much for your time. I.