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[Feature flag] Rollout of `super_sidebar_nav_enrolled`

Summary

This rollout is for the super_sidebar_nav_enrolled feature flag.

If this flag is enabled, the new navigation becomes an opt-out experience instead of an opt-in one. The reason this is behind a flag is so we can incrementally roll this flag out to a percentage of users.

The roll-out plan for gitlab.com:

  • Day 1 (Tue, 2023-05-30): 10% of users
  • Day 2 (Wed, 2023-05-31): 25% of users
  • Day 3 (Thu, 2023-06-01): 50% of users
  • Day 4 (Fri, 2023-06-02): 100% of users

Owners

Stakeholders

@samdbeckham @david @clenneville

Expectations

What are we expecting to happen?

We will enable this FF only for a percentage of users. These users then will see the new nav, as long as they haven't set a preference themselves yet. Meaning, they can switch back to the current nav at any time. This only makes the the new nav a opt-out instead of an opt-in, as it currently is for all users.

When is the feature viable?

When our new nav is deemed ready to be the default for everyone, we don't need this FF here anymore 🚮

What might happen if this goes wrong?

We may see an increase in users toggling the navigation off explicitly. Users can always use the toggle in their user (avatar) dropdown to switch back to the old nav.

Rollout on non-production environments

  • Verify the MR with the feature flag is merged to master.
  • Verify that the feature MRs have been deployed to non-production environments with:
    • /chatops run auto_deploy status <merge-commit-of-your-feature>
  • Enable the feature globally on non-production environments.
    • /chatops run feature set super_sidebar_nav_enrolled true --dev --staging --staging-ref
    • If the feature flag causes QA end-to-end tests to fail:
      • [-] Disable the feature flag on staging to avoid blocking deployments.
  • Verify that the feature works as expected. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable. The best environment to validate the feature in is staging-canary as this is the first environment deployed to. Note you will need to make sure you are configured to use canary as outlined here when accessing the staging environment in order to make sure you are testing appropriately.

For assistance with QA end-to-end test failures, please reach out via the #quality Slack channel. Note that QA test failures on staging-ref don't block deployments.

Specific rollout on production

For visibility, all /chatops commands that target production should be executed in the #production slack channel and cross-posted (with the command results) to the responsible team's slack channel (#g_manage_foundations).

  • Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to both production and canary.
    • /chatops run auto_deploy status <merge-commit-of-your-feature>
  • Depending on the type of actor you are using, pick one of these options:
    • If you're using user-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
      • /chatops run feature set --user=<your-username> super_sidebar_nav_enrolled true
  • Verify that the feature works on the specific entries. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.

Preparation before global rollout

  • Set a milestone to the rollout issue to signal for enabling and removing the feature flag when it is stable.
  • Check if the feature flag change needs to be accompanied with a change management issue. Cross link the issue here if it does.
  • Ensure that you or a representative in development can be available for at least 2 hours after feature flag updates in production. If a different developer will be covering, or an exception is needed, please inform the oncall SRE by using the @sre-oncall Slack alias.
  • Ensure that documentation has been updated (More info).
  • [-] Leave a comment on the feature issue announcing estimated time when this feature flag will be enabled on GitLab.com.
  • [-] Ensure that any breaking changes have been announced following the release post process to ensure GitLab customers are aware.
  • [-] Notify #support_gitlab-com and your team channel (more guidance when this is necessary in the dev docs).
  • Ensure that the feature flag rollout plan is reviewed by another developer familiar with the domain.

Global rollout on production

For visibility, all /chatops commands that target production should be executed in the #production slack channel and cross-posted (with the command results) to the responsible team's slack channel (#g_manage_foundations).

Release the feature

After the feature has been deemed stable, the clean up should be done as soon as possible to permanently enable the feature and reduce complexity in the codebase.

You can either create a follow-up issue for Feature Flag Cleanup or use the checklist below in this same issue.

  • Create a merge request to remove super_sidebar_nav_enrolled feature flag. Ask for review and merge it.
    • Remove all references to the feature flag from the codebase.
    • Remove the YAML definitions for the feature from the repository.
    • Create a changelog entry.
  • Ensure that the cleanup MR has been included in the release package. If the merge request was deployed before the monthly release was tagged, the feature can be officially announced in a release blog post.
    • /chatops run release check <merge-request-url> <milestone>
  • Close the feature issue to indicate the feature will be released in the current milestone.
  • Clean up the feature flag from all environments by running these chatops command in #production channel:
    • /chatops run feature delete super_sidebar_nav_enrolled --dev --staging --staging-ref --production
  • Close this rollout issue.

Rollback Steps

  • This feature can be disabled by running the following Chatops command:
/chatops run feature set super_sidebar_nav_enrolled false
Edited by Lukas Eipert