Tomorrow I will help a new team member onboard at my client. I am the acting tech-lead for the client right now and so it’s my job to make sure that everything is in place for this new member of the team.

The former tech lead onboarded me in September (not so long ago). He had prepared a list of tasks we had to do together. He even created a whole new Trello board, just for the onboarding. Did he do it because it was so laborious? No! In fact, the onboarding mostly consisted of joining the services and Saas applications we use and getting familiar with all the processes for running the show.

But it did help to be able to cross items off the list. We were always aware of which services were yet to join. We also knew what was missing until I was at 100%. That was certainly helpful.

When I am onboarded at a new client, I generally send them my onboarding survey beforehand. In it I ask questions that are relevant to the process and to me, and that come up with every client. Asking them these questions before I arrive, they tend to be better prepared.

I am really looking forward to having the new developer join the team, tomorrow. I bet he’ll do great. And to help him along, I’ll just follow my onboarding sheet. 😉

Do you use something similar?

Yours,
Holger