Onboarding Software Developers in Your agile Team

Practical onboarding involves things like benefits signups, company-wide training videos, HR requirements, equipment setup, and account access ^[1].

Anything essential for the new employee to get paid, access benefits, and function as an employee in the company.

This onboarding should happen anywhere from a day to a week of being hired, depending on the size of the company and the complexity of the practical requirements.

This part may seem obvious as a part of onboarding, but this is often the first impression a new employee has of your company, so the way it happens matters.

Do everything you can to make the practical aspect of onboarding seamless, efficient, and even fun [3].

If there is a way to gather information from the employee before their start date, even better.

Just like the practical side of onboarding, skill onboarding should start on the first day for a new employee. You want the software developer to be well versed in your code base, processes, and systems, so the earlier they can get access to it, the better.

One of the best ways to do this is to require new employees to push out an actual piece of code within the first week of being hired. Make sure there are safeguards in place, so they cannot do any damage to the code itself, but make sure it is significant enough to give them a complete look at the codebase and the process in place for pushing out code.

This is also a great opportunity to employ pair programming. Pair programming sets a new developer up with an experienced developer within the company to work together to complete tickets. Although the entire team should be available to answer questions, this will give the new employee a single point of contact as they are getting up to speed on how your company works.

For larger companies, this process should involve multiple points of contact, from a senior managerial level to a peer. Even smaller companies should try and pair new employees with a few different colleagues.

If there are any step-by-step processes expected for developers for coding, communication, and workflow, be sure to have them in writing and readily available. New employees should not need to go searching for the same information over and over again.

Skill onboarding should take anywhere from 3 to 6 months, with monthly reviews every month to gauge progress ^[2].

Cultural onboarding is often the most overlooked aspect of onboarding, but arguably the most important piece [4].

Developers that stick around do so because they enjoy their work environment, believe in what they are doing, and feel like they belong and matter to the overall company [5].

Of course, some aspects of cultural onboarding will happen in tandem with skill onboarding, as the new employee is working directly with teams and individuals within the company to accomplish a common goal.

However, that in and of itself is not enough to truly translate company culture to a new employee.

Within the first week, there should be some form of communication from the executive management on the larger values of the organization. The big picture of what the company is trying to accomplish, and a way to interact with the team members should be discussed.

If you are a small company, this can be as simple as a lunch or coffee with the founder. For mid-size or large companies, it may need to be more formal [1, 2, 3]. However, if at all possible, this should happen in person, even for remote workers [4].

We always suggest that new employees do their first two to four weeks of employment on site, if possible.

If you are working with a near source team and flying them up to headquarters is not realistic, then make a plan to spend a week or two with the new employees. Cultural onboarding is about relationship building, and doing so in-person makes a difference.