Team Onboarding

---
name: team-onboarding
description: Comprehensive onboarding methodology for new team members covering pre-boarding through 90-day milestones. Use when planning onboarding, creating checklists, or establishing team integration processes.
---

# Team Onboarding

## Pre-Onboarding

- Create accounts (email, Slack, GitHub, AWS, etc.) with SSO/2FA
- Prepare hardware, temporary credentials, password manager guide
- Compile role-specific docs, update org charts
- Configure calendar with initial meetings

## Week 1: Orientation & Immersion

**Day 1:** Manager welcome, team intros, role expectations, IT setup, HR paperwork

**Codebase:**
- Architecture overview and system diagrams
- Main repos walkthrough with tech lead
- Dev workflow, branching strategy, code style
- CI/CD, deployment, monitoring tour

**First Contributions:**
- "Good first issues" tasks
- Pair programming on simple fix
- Submit first PR with buddy guidance

## Dev Environment Setup

- IDE + extensions, linters, formatters, debugger, git config
- Database connections (read-only initially), API keys via secrets manager
- Container setup, testing framework, staging access

## Buddy System

| Week | Frequency | Activities | Time |
|------|-----------|------------|------|
| 1 | Daily | Check-in, pair programming | 2 hrs/day |
| 2-3 | 3x/week | Code review, architecture | 1 hr/day |
| 4 | 2x/week | Project collaboration | 30 min/day |
| 5-8 | Weekly | Progress check-in | 1 hr/week |
| 9-12 | Bi-weekly | Mentorship transition | 30 min/week |

## Milestones

### 30-Day
- Complete mandatory training, merge 3+ PRs
- Document one process, present learnings (10 min)

### 60-Day
- Own small feature end-to-end, shadow on-call
- Contribute to technical design, cross-team relationships

### 90-Day
- Independent feature delivery, active code review
- Mentor newer member, propose process improvement

## Example Plans

### Software Engineer (30/60/90)

**Day 1-7:** IT setup, team intros, dev env, first PR, architecture sessions
**Week 2-4:** 5+ PR reviews as observer, shadow senior, document unclear process
**Day 31-60:** Own first feature, design review, shadow on-call, pair with 3+ members
**Day 61-90:** Lead small project, participate in planning, handle on-call with supervision

### Senior/Lead Engineer (Accelerated)

**Week 1:** Leadership intros, full architecture deep-dive, priorities briefing, stakeholder meetings
**Week 2-3:** Review postmortems, analyze tech debt, audit processes, identify quick wins
**Week 4:** Lead first ceremony, own critical decision, establish 1:1 cadence, submit architectural proposal