Value Streams Dashboard

DETAILS: Tier: Ultimate Offering: SaaS, self-managed

• Introduced in GitLab 15.8 as a Closed Beta feature with a flag named group_analytics_dashboards_page. Disabled by default.
• Released in GitLab 15.11 as an Open Beta feature with a flag named group_analytics_dashboards_page. Enabled by default.
• Generally available in GitLab 16.0. Feature flag group_analytics_dashboards_page removed.

To help us improve the Value Streams Dashboard, share feedback about your experience in this survey. For more information, see also the Value Stream Management category direction page.

The Value Streams Dashboard is a customizable dashboard you can use to identify trends, patterns, and opportunities for digital transformation improvements. The centralized UI in Value Streams Dashboard acts as the single source of truth (SSOT), where all stakeholders can access and view the same set of metrics that are relevant to the organization.

The Value Streams Dashboard includes two panels (DevSecOps metrics comparison and DORA Performers score) that visualize the following metrics:

• DORA metrics
• Value Stream Analytics (VSA) - flow metrics
• Vulnerabilities metrics.

With the Value Streams Dashboard, you can:

• Track and compare the above metrics over a period of time.
• Identify downward trends early on.
• Understand security exposure.
• Drill down into individual projects or metrics to take actions for improvement.

NOTE: Data displayed on the Value Streams Dashboard is continuously collected in the backend. If you upgrade to the Ultimate tier, you get access to historical data, and can view metrics about past GitLab usage and performance.

Value Streams Dashboard panels

The Value Streams Dashboard panels has a default configuration, but you can also customize the dashboard panels.

DevSecOps metrics comparison panel

• Contributor count metric added in GitLab 16.9.

The DevSecOps metrics comparison displays DORA4, vulnerability, and flow metrics for a group or project in the month-to-date, last month, the month before, and the past 180 days.

This visualization helps you get a high-level custom view over multiple DevOps metrics and understand whether they're improving month over month. You can compare the performance between groups, projects, and teams at a glance. This visualization helps you identify the teams and projects that are the largest value contributors, overperforming, or underperforming.

You can also drill down the metrics for further analysis. When you hover over a metric, a tooltip displays an explanation of the metric and a link to the related documentation page.

The monthly values also indicate a percentage increase or decrease compared to the previous month.

The sparkline for the past six months represents value trends over this time period, not the percentage change rate. The sparkline color ranges from blue to green, where green indicates a positive trend, and blue indicates a negative trend. Sparklines help you identify patterns in metric trends (such as seasonal changes) over time.

NOTE: The contributor count metric is available only on GitLab.com at the group-level. To view this metric in the comparison panel, you must set up ClickHouse, and enable the feature flags clickhouse_data_collection and event_sync_worker_for_click_house.

DORA Performers score panel

• Introduced in GitLab 16.3 with a flag named dora_performers_score_panel. Disabled by default.
• Enabled on GitLab.com in GitLab 16.9.

FLAG: On self-managed GitLab, by default this feature is available. To hide the feature, an administrator can disable the feature flag named dora_performers_score_panel.

The DORA metrics Performers score panel is a bar chart that visualizes the status of the organization's DevOps performance levels across different projects.

The chart is a breakdown of your project's DORA scores, categorized as high, medium, or low. It aggregates all the child projects in the group.

Each bar on the chart displays the sum of total projects per score category, calculated monthly. To exclude data from the chart (for example, "Not Included"), in the legend select the series you want to exclude. Hovering over each bar reveals a dialog that explains the score's definition.

For example, if a project has a high score for Deployment Frequency (Velocity), it means that the project has one or more deploys to production per day.

These scoring are based on Google's classifications in the DORA 2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report.

Filter the DORA Performers score by project topics

When used in combination with a YAML configuration, you can filter the projects shown based on their assigned topics.

panels:
  - data:
      namespace: group/my-custom-group
      filter_project_topics:
        - JavaScript
        - Vue.js

If multiple topics are provided, all topics will need to match for the project to be included in the results.

Enable or disable overview background aggregation

DETAILS: Tier: Ultimate Offering: Self-managed

• Introduced in GitLab 16.1 with a flag named value_stream_dashboard_on_off_setting. Disabled by default.
• Enabled on self-managed in GitLab 16.4.
• Feature flag value_stream_dashboard_on_off_setting removed in GitLab 16.6.

To enable or disable the overview count aggregation for the Value Streams Dashboard:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Analytics.
4. In Value Streams Dashboard, select or clear the Enable overview background aggregation for Value Streams Dashboard checkbox.

To retrieve aggregated usage counts in the group, use the GraphQL API.

View the value streams dashboard

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Reporter role for the group.
• Overview background aggregation for Value Streams Dashboards must be enabled.

To view the value streams dashboard:

• From Analytics Dashboards:

  1. On the group left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
  2. Select Analyze > Analytics Dashboards.

• From Value Stream Analytics:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project or group.
  2. Select Analyze > Value stream analytics.
  3. Below the Filter results text box, in the Lifecycle metrics row, select Value Streams Dashboard / DORA.
  4. Optional. To open the new page, append this path /analytics/dashboards/value_streams_dashboard to the group URL (for example, https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/analytics/dashboards/value_streams_dashboard).

You can also view the Value Streams Dashboard rendered as an analytics dashboard for a group or project.

Customize the dashboard panels

You can customize the Value Streams Dashboard and configure what subgroups and projects to include in the page.

Using query parameters

To display multiple subgroups and projects, specify their path as a URL parameter.

For example, the parameter query=gitlab-org/gitlab-ui,gitlab-org/plan-stage displays three separate panels, one each for the:

• gitlab-org group
• gitlab-ui project
• gitlab-org/plan-stage subgroup

Using YAML configuration

To customize the default content of the page, you need to create a YAML configuration file in a project of your choice. In this file you can define various settings and parameters, such as title, description, and number of panels and labels filters. The file is schema-driven and managed with version control systems like Git. This enables tracking and maintaining a history of configuration changes, reverting to previous versions if necessary, and collaborating effectively with team members. Query parameters can still be used to override the YAML configuration.

First, you need to set up the project.

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the group.

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Analytics.
4. Select the project where you would like to store your YAML configuration file.
5. Select Save changes.

After you have set up the project, set up the configuration file:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. In the default branch, create the configuration file: .gitlab/analytics/dashboards/value_streams/value_streams.yaml.
3. In the value_streams.yaml configuration file, fill in the configuration options:

# title - Change the title of the Value Streams Dashboard. [optional]
title: 'Custom Dashboard title'

# description - Change the description of the Value Streams Dashboard. [optional]
description: 'Custom description'

# panels - List of panels that contain panel settings.
#   title - Change the title of the panel. [optional]
#   data.namespace - The Group or Project path to use for the chart panel.
#   data.exclude_metrics - Hide rows by metric ID from the chart panel.
#   data.filter_labels -
#     Only show results for data that matches the queried label(s). If multiple labels are provided,
#     only a single label needs to match for the data to be included in the results.
#     Compatible metrics (other metrics will be automatically excluded):
#       * lead_time
#       * cycle_time
#       * issues
#       * issues_completed
#       * merge_request_throughput
panels:
  - title: 'My Custom Project'
    data:
      namespace: group/my-custom-project
  - data:
      namespace: group/another-project
      filter_labels:
        - in_development
        - in_review
  - title: 'My Custom Group'
    data:
      namespace: group/my-custom-group
      exclude_metrics:
        - deployment_frequency
        - change_failure_rate
  - data:
      namespace: group/another-group

The following example has an option configuration for a panel for the my-group namespace:

panels:
  - data:
      namespace: my-group

For an overview of editing label filters in the configuration file, see GitLab Value Streams Dashboard - Label filters demo.

Filter the DevSecOps metrics comparison panel by labels

Label filters are appended as query parameters to the URL of the drill-down report of each eligible metric and automatically applied. If the comparison panel from the configuration file is enabled with filter_labels, the drill-down links inherit the labels from the panel filter.

  - data:
      namespace: group/another-project
      filter_labels:
        - in_development
        - in_review

Dashboard metrics and drill-down reports

Value Streams Dashboard metrics with Jira

The following metrics do not depend on using Jira:

• DORA Deployment frequency
• DORA Lead time for changes
• Number of deploys
• Merge request throughput
• Vulnerabilities