Onboarding a new team member
Use the following template to build out an onboarding doc and checklist for new team members. The purpose of this is to help guide teams on ensuring they cover context most effectively and provide a consistent, well-structured onboarding experience across teams when new engineers join.
💼 Non-Engineering
Section titled “💼 Non-Engineering”Project background
Section titled “Project background”Use this section to summarize the project, its primary goals and objectives, and any historical context around its current goals and status and roadmap.
Provide links to more info, such as:
- Product brief
- Recent roadmap review slides
- Recent stakeholder checkin arifacts
Project team
Section titled “Project team”List all team members and their roles.
Key stakeholders
Section titled “Key stakeholders”List any names external to the project team (such as agency stakeholders) that team members are likely to encounter in conversation or on the project. Include their role and the context of their involvement.
Team processes
Section titled “Team processes”Write up (or link to any documents) explaining team processes such as:
- Team working agreement
- Sprint Process
- Release Process
- Anything else
💻 Engineering
Section titled “💻 Engineering”Onboarding planning
Section titled “Onboarding planning”Use this section to write a checklist of contextual background information that should be voiced over and talked through between the team and the new team member. Make a plan for what team member will be responsible for covering each item
- Tour of the product
- Tour of the codebase - how is it organized
- How to run the code locally
- Discussion of any key technical decisions made so far
- Contextualizing - here’s what we’re working on in the upcoming 2 weeks
List all tools used on the project and the onboarding process to get access to those tools (who is responsible for adding the new team member to X?)
Engineering links
Section titled “Engineering links”List repository links, sprint boards, documentation, or any other relevant resources.
What’s next
Section titled “What’s next”Use this section to make a plan/schedule of actions for the team and the new team member to carry out. Things might include:
- New team member should try to follow README and run the code locally
- Pairing session with an existing team member to follow along with existing work
Basically, everything here should plan for when the new team member should pick up a ticket independently. What do they need to do before they might feel prepared to take something on? Be clear who is the responsible party for each item to make it happen!