Onboarding a new developer.

#teamwork #productivity #process #career

A good on-boarding can

help feel the developer welcomed in the team
provide the developer an overview about how the teams work, best practices, team culture etc...
help him find his way around his first project. It's hard to imagine someone new, will be able to figure out everything on his own.
give faces to names. A face to face engagement is good opportunity for the team to meet the new guy and vice-versa.

What is it about?

Culture communication and etiquette
Coding standards
Internal system and processes
People and contacts

How to do it?

Mentoring
Documentation
Meetings, lunch
Pair Programming

Onboarding Checklist

Here is what this checklist may look like.

Before Start day

Setup Access. SCM, CI/CD, Slack, JIRA etc ...

First day

Intro Team

First week

Up to speed into ongoing projects.
Knowledge sharing.
Team lunch

First month

... and so on

The above is a template to exemplify the idea, You should make your own itinerary that works best for your organisation/team

Although it might take time and effort from the team to prepare this, it is a superb investment in your next star "employee of the month". First impressions matter.