A Public Handbook: Building trust with the team, customers, and beyond

by Cynthia "Arty" Ng

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Cynthia "Arty" Ng, Staff Support Engineer A Public Handbook: Building trust with the team, customers, and beyond

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GitLab as of 2023-09-15 ● 2000+ team members ● Fully remote in 65+ countries/regions ● 130+ Support Department ● Multiple platforms: ○ Self-managed (self install) ○ Dedicated (Single tenant SaaS) ○ SaaS (GitLab.com)

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Credit: tanuki head by Cloudtail the Snow Leopard, CC2.0 BY-NC-ND, https://www.flickr.com/photos/blacktigersdream/14740032471

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About me ● Documentarian ● Blogger ● At GitLab 5+ years ● Originally hired for SaaS Support

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Answer these questions ● Do you find yourself wanting to write things down? ● Do you have processes that need to be followed? ● Do you have workflows that are shared with another team? ● Do you have information that needs to be consistently shared?

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A handbook: What and why

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What is a handbook? “A handbook is a type of reference work, or other collection of instructions, that is intended to provide ready reference.” - Wikipedia “The handbook is the central repository for how we run the company.” - GitLab

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Why a handbook? ● “Shared reality” with a Single Source of Truth (SSoT) ● Low-context communication ● Documented workflows promote ○ measurement clarity ○ results standardization ○ worker autonomy ○ efficient onboarding / inclusivity ○ continuous improvement ○ operational scalability

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“By providing a common reference point, these documented workflows enhance efficiency and consistency, ultimately leading to improved team productivity and outcomes.” - GitLab’s TeamOps

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Why a public handbook? For the same reasons!

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Support Driven Slack: #leadership Used with permission

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Why a public handbook? ● Efficiency ● Consistency ● Transparent measurements ○ Example: GitLab Support KPIs & OKRs ● Operational transparency ● Collaboration ● Community resource

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Source: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7103123870966063104?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A7 103123870966063104%2C7103132189059346432%29&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287103132189059346432 %2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7103123870966063104%29

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Creating a handbook

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What you need ● Buy-in ● Location / Version controlled tool ● Easy (enough) to use ● Reinforcement

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“If it's not in the handbook, then it's not part of the process.” - Kenneth Chu (Senior Support Engineer) Source: Support issue by JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vombatus_ursinu s_-Maria_Island_National_Park_Edit_2.jpg

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What you need ● Buy-in ● Location / Version controlled tool ● Easy (enough) to use ● Reinforcement ● Public by default (separate internal only) ● Start small and iterate

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2018-01-01 2023-07-01 Growth SaaS specific Support workflows 7 37 x5 Support workflows 25 109 x4 All pages 228 2876 x12 GitLab Handbook pages Source: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/about/#count-handbook-pages

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Set expectations

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Encouraging contributions ● Doesn’t need to be perfect ● Invite collaboration on changes ● Have guidelines on what level of review is required ● Mark which pages are “controlled” ● Have clear guidelines on internal-only information ○ Example: SAFE framework ● Not “set in stone”

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“It's not ‘just a rulebook’ that you follow blindly. Sometimes it might be wrong (because it was written by humans), but being able to see the discussions behind why something was added helps us to work out a way forward when we come to undocumented edge cases. (Of which there are many in the land of Support).” - Kenneth Chu (Senior Support Engineer) Source: Support issue by JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vombatus_ursinu s_-Maria_Island_National_Park_Edit_2.jpg

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Build it into Support ● Provide & budget time ● Onboarding ● Job responsibility ● Performance review ● Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

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Source: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/support/performance-indicators/#support-handbook-mr-rate Number of handbook merge requests merged / number of Support team members

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Take away

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“Someone said I feel like I found my corporate soul mate after reading our handbook.” - Sid Sijbrandij (Co-founder & CEO) The Logan Bartlett Show (Dec 16, 2022)

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“Transparency increases not only sales but also people’s trust and satisfaction.” - Ryan Buell on Operational Transparency Harvard Business Review, March-April 2019 Baby Turtle 023 by cygnus921, CC BY 2.0, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cygnus921/2581020296/