GitLab Solutions Architect Demo

You are requested to deliver a high-level end-to-end demo of the GitLab platform. This is a 60-minute session. The core demo should be roughly 30 minutes, but you should expect potential interruptions throughout the demo and/or Q&A that may extend the demo as long as an hour in duration. The demo audience will not expect you to be a GitLab expert, but rather will be looking at your presentation style, clarity of the GitLab value proposition, audience engagement, etc.

Please engage the panel attendees like you would engage any prospect or customer - speak to the value of the platform, tell a story, engage the customer, solve problems, etc.

"Customer" Account Information

The primary application developed by a 500 developer firm is a web-based app using Java Maven.

Note: The demo you deliver doesn't have to be a Java project - please use a language you feel most comfortable to demonstrate in, and relate it back to the customer's use-case where appropriate.

The current tools stack includes the following:

• Jira for portfolio and issue management
• GitHub for SCM
• Jenkins for CI/CD
• EC2 on AWS for deployments
• Customer Voice

"We use Jira for agile planning and sprint setup, then the development team works in GitHub to develop the features on a branch. Each branch runs pipelines to test the code using our internal testing framework. We are considering moving toward microservices but currently utilize a monolithic application.“

“When a feature is merged into master, Jenkins kicks off a build, tags it, and deploys it to our EC2 instance on AWS. We do have some problems managing all our disparate Jenkins servers - some need to be rebooted daily, and many times the pipelines run longer than we wish. We are currently considering using EKS to help us save costs on app scaling as well as to simplify our deployments."

Demo Attendees

• Director of Software Development
• Director of Application Security
• Lead DevOps Engineer

Demo Setup

• Following receipt of these instructions from the recruiter, the hiring manager will provision a GitLab.com Group specifically for you to be able to conduct your demo. You will recieve an email to your personal email address notifying you of the invitation to the group.
• The group has GitLab Ultimate tier functionality enabled (so all features are available to you)
• The group uses the GitLab Agent to provide you with a deployment target (in a parent group not visible to you)
• Project Options:
  1. You can create a project in this group using the existing project templates that GitLab provides, making use of one that you are most familiar with (in terms of language). Note: If you have no preference, the NodeJS project template is one of the most lightweight and as such, is quicker to run CI/CD pipelines with.
  2. You can create your own blank project and add your own code to it, as you like, in a language of your choice.
  3. You can clone another public project's Git repository from anywhere online.

Note: You do not have to make use of this pre-configured group if you would rather set your own up. But this will then require you to enter credit card details in order to access the GitLab.com shared runners (no charge made).

Demo Guidelines

Introduction

• When providing your introduction to the demonstration, please do so however you are most comfortable for a prospect or customer meeting (e.g., verbally, slides, whiteboard, etc.). However, please keep the introduction to 5 minutes or less. If you choose to present slides, slides should be no more than 5 in total.

Demo

• To repeat the key section above: You are requested to deliver a high-level end-to-end demo of the GitLab platform. Please speak to the value of the platform, tell a story, engage the customer, solve problems, etc.
• As a minimum, the flow of your demo should include the creation of Issue (Plan) through Review (Create) stages of the Demo page in the GitLab Handbook.
• You may find it useful to watch the demo video at the top of the page or available on YouTube - though the video is now a few versions out of date, the same concepts still apply and Auto DevOps still functions in a similar manner.
• Tip: For time considerations, it is typically best to use an existing Merge Request in the project to discuss the value of the pipeline that was run, the outputs of that pipeline, etc. rather than making changes and simply waiting for the pipeline to complete, as pipelines can take 5-10+ minutes to complete depending on the project.

Warnings

PostgreSQL

By default, PostgreSQL databases are deployed alongside applications when using Auto DevOps. This functionality has been disabled by at the group level by setting the POSTGRES_ENABLED CI/CD variable to false. If this is required for your project, please re-enable it at the project level by setting POSTGRES_ENABLED to true.

Code Quality

If you intend to demo the Code Quality functionality as part of Auto DevOps, you will find that it doesn't execute by default. This is because the CODE_QUALITY_DISABLED CI/CD variable has been set to 1 at the group level (for speed). If you want to enable it for your project specifically, please set the CODE_QUALITY_DISABLED CI/CD variable to 0.

Notes

Please feel free to email the hiring manager with any questions, issues or concerns as you prepare for the demo. You will find the hiring manager’s email on the calendar invite for the demo interview.

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