Effective team onboarding in Agile software development: techniques and goals

• Main Authors: Buchan, Jim, MacDonell, Stephen, Yang, Jennifer
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 23-07-2019
• Subjects: Computer Science - Software Engineering
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1907.10206

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.