Effective team onboarding in Agile software development: techniques and goals

Abstract: Context: It is not uncommon for a new team member to join an existing Agile software development team, even after development has started. This new team member faces a number of challenges before they are integrated into the team and can contribute productively to team progress. Ideally, each newcomer should be supported in this transition through an effective team onboarding program, although prior evidence suggests that this is challenging for many organisations. Objective: We seek to understand how Agile teams address the challenge of team onboarding in order to inform future onboarding design. Method: We conducted an interview survey of eleven participants from eight organisations to investigate what onboarding activities are common across Agile software development teams. We also identify common goals of onboarding from a synthesis of literature. A repertory grid instrument is used to map the contributions of onboarding techniques to onboarding goals. Results: Our study reveals that a broad range of team onboarding techniques, both formal and informal, are used in practice. It also shows that particular techniques that have high contributions to a given goal or set of goals. Conclusions: In presenting a set of onboarding goals to consider and an evidence-based mechanism for selecting techniques to achieve the desired goals it is expected that this study will contribute to better-informed onboarding design and planning. An increase in practitioner awareness of the options for supporting new team members is also an expected outcome.