In the last month and a bit, I’ve been heads down starting with a new team on another release of an old project I worked on last year. Onboarding new members to a team or to a project is important to me – namely because I’ve been in positions where if it’s not done right makes people a less effective team member. Tight schedules and the overall lack of domain knowledge in new team members meant that successful or unsuccessful onboarding a huge influence on overall project success.
Perhaps it’s my emphasis on coaching, learning and sharing that means that my interest naturally gravitates towards onboarding activities. Just like well-run company inductions help new employees in their overall position, I feel project onboarding is important for setting the scene, establishing the role and efforts of new members. The last thing I wanted was for a bunch of really enthusiastic people to be pulling in separate directions. After talking with some people at the pub, I realised that the techniques I applied aren’t naturally that apparent to people, so I thought I’d write up about them, how we used them, how unsuccessful or unsuccessful they were and then what I’d change about them. In a way, these patterns are a combination of learning/teaching patterns that might be useful to someone (if so, I’d really like to know and please leave a comment!)
I’ll continue to categorise/tag each of these as “Onboarding Strategy” so it’s easy to find. Read on for the first one here.
