Add example Cycle Analytics workflowdocs/ca-feedback

[ci skip]

1 files changed, 53 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/doc/user/project/cycle_analytics.md b/doc/user/project/cycle_analytics.md
index eb9a0b8e2e3..7a40f3dad03 100644
--- a/doc/user/project/cycle_analytics.md
+++ b/doc/user/project/cycle_analytics.md
@@ -61,8 +61,8 @@ Below you can see in more detail what the various stages of Cycle Analytics mean
 | **Stage** | **Description** |
 | --------- | --------------- |
 | Issue     | Measures the median time between creating an issue and taking action to solve it, by either labeling it or adding it to a milestone, whatever comes first. The label will be tracked only if it already has an [Issue Board list][board] created for it. |
-| Plan      | Measures the median time between the action you took for the previous stage, and pushing the first commit to the branch. The very first commit of the branch is the one that triggers the separation between **Plan** and **Code**, and at least one of the commits in the branch needs to contain the related issue number (e.g., `#42`). If there is no commit containing the related issue number, it is not considered to the measurement time of the stage. |
-| Code      | Measures the median time between pushing a first commit (previous stage) and creating a merge request related to that commit. The key to keep the process tracked is to include the [issue closing pattern] to the description of the merge request (for example, `Closes #xxx`, where `xxx` is the number of the issue related to this merge request). If the issue closing pattern is not present in the merge request description, the MR is not considered to the measurement time of the stage. |
+| Plan      | Measures the median time between the action you took for the previous stage, and pushing the first commit to the branch. The very first commit of the branch is the one that triggers the separation between **Plan** and **Code**, and at least one of the commits in the branch needs to contain the related issue number (e.g., `#42`). If none of the commits in the branch mention the related issue number, it is not considered to the measurement time of the stage. |
+| Code      | Measures the median time between pushing a first commit (previous stage) and creating a merge request (MR) related to that commit. The key to keep the process tracked is to include the [issue closing pattern] to the description of the merge request (for example, `Closes #xxx`, where `xxx` is the number of the issue related to this merge request). If the issue closing pattern is not present in the merge request description, the MR is not considered to the measurement time of the stage. |
 | Test      | Measures the median time to run the entire pipeline for that project. It's related to the time GitLab CI takes to run every job for the commits pushed to that merge request defined in the previous stage. It is basically the start->finish time for all pipelines. `master` is not excluded. It does not attempt to track time for any particular stages. |
 | Review    | Measures the median time taken to review the merge request, between its creation and until it's merged. |
 | Staging   | Measures the median time between merging the merge request until the very first deployment to production. It's tracked by the [environment] set to `production` (case-sensitive, `Production` won't work) in your GitLab CI configuration. If there isn't a `production` environment, this is not tracked. |
@@ -90,6 +90,54 @@ label present in the Issue Board or assigned a milestone or a project has no
 `production` environment, the Cycle Analytics dashboard won't present any data
 at all.
 
+## Example workflow
+
+Below is a simple fictional workflow of a single cycle that happens in a
+single day passing through all seven stages. Note that if a stage does not have
+a start/stop mark, it is not measured and hence not calculated in the median
+time. It is assumed that milestones are created and CI for testing and setting
+environments is configured.
+
+1. Issue is created at 09:00 (start of **Issue** stage).
+1. Issue is added to a milestone at 11:00 (stop of **Issue** stage / start of
+   **Plan** stage).
+1. Start working on the issue, create a branch locally and make one commit at
+   12:00.
+1. Make a second commit to the branch which mentions the issue number at 12.30
+   (stop of **Plan** stage / start of **Code** stage).
+1. Push branch and create a merge request that contains the [issue closing pattern]
+   in its description at 14:00 (stop of **Code** stage / start of **Test** and
+   **Review** stages).
+1. The test suite starts running and takes 5min (stop of **Test** stage).
+1. Review merge request, ensure that everything is OK and merge the merge
+   request at 19:00. (stop of **Review** stage / start of **Staging** stage).
+1. Now that the merge request is merged, a deployment to the `production`
+   environment starts and finishes at 19:30 (stop of **Staging** stage).
+1. The cycle completes and the sum of it is shown in the **Production** stage.
+
+From the above example you can conclude the time it took each stage to complete
+as long as their total time:
+
+- **Issue**:  2h (11:00 - 09:00)
+- **Plan**:   1h (12:00 - 11:00)
+- **Code**:   2h (14:00 - 12:00)
+- **Test**:   5min
+- **Review**: 5h (19:00 - 14:00)
+- **Staging**:  30min (19:30 - 19:00)
+- **Production**: 10h 30min (19:30 - 09:00)
+
+A few notes:
+
+- You can see that the **Test** stage is not calculated to the overall time of
+  the cycle since it is included in the **Review** process (every MR should be
+  tested).
+
+---
+
+The example above was just one cycle of the seven stages. Add multiple cycles,
+calculate their median time and the result is what the dashboard of Cycle
+Analytics is showing.
+
 ## Permissions
 
 The current permissions on the Cycle Analytics dashboard are:
@@ -108,11 +156,11 @@ Learn more about Cycle Analytics in the following resources:
 - [Cycle Analytics feature highlight](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/09/21/cycle-analytics-feature-highlight/)
 
 
+[board]: issue_board.md#creating-a-new-list
 [ce-5986]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requests/5986
 [ce-20975]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/20975
-[GitLab flow]: ../../workflow/gitlab_flow.md
-[permissions]: ../permissions.md
 [environment]: ../../ci/yaml/README.md#environment
-[board]: issue_board.md#creating-a-new-list
+[GitLab flow]: ../../workflow/gitlab_flow.md
 [idea to production]: https://about.gitlab.com/2016/08/05/continuous-integration-delivery-and-deployment-with-gitlab/#from-idea-to-production-with-gitlab
 [issue closing pattern]: issues/automatic_issue_closing.md
+[permissions]: ../permissions.md