Onboarding Buddy guide

This guide is a supplementary material for the main IxDF Onboarding - Onboarding Buddy Playbook and focused on developers only.

• Do onboarding
  • 1. Send missing invitations
  • 2. Prepare the onboarding project
  • 3. Share responsibilities
  • 4. Assign technical tasks
• How to find technical tasks
• 3rd week wrap up call with your Team Lead

Do onboarding

1. Send missing invitations

Send invitations to dev-specific services:

1. Dev-specific LastPass folders
2. GitHub: Ensure that the new developer is added to the devs and backend-devs and frontend-devs teams.
3. Laravel Forge: Server Provision service for our servers & sites. Mentee should be added to "Development Team" circle. Ensure 2FA is enabled.
4. PHPStorm license
5. GitHub Copilot
6. Codecov: Don’t see the new developer? It may be because they haven’t logged into Codecov yet. Please make sure they log into Codecov first, then add them as a member.
7. Update config/ixdf.php: add a new developer to the github_accounts array (find Member id on Nova).
8. Ensure that the IxDF Member profile for a new developer has a developer role
   1. Ask a new developer to set a mobile number on his/her IxDF profile update: the app will use it for critical alerts.1. Ask a developer to add their phone number to the downnotifier.com.

The Remaining invitations will be sent by your teammates from other teams.

2. Prepare the onboarding project

There is an Asana Dev Onboarding Roadmap project template. Please click on "Use Template" to create a project and assign all tasks to a new developer.

3. Share responsibilities

Backend developers: assign modules

For backend developers, from the first week, we should assign the developer to 1–3 modules to transfer ownership. It’s better to do it based on:

1. Developer’s experience (check the CV)
2. Developer’s interests (ask)
3. Orphan modules (check the Domain Modules and Code Owners) (the ones with ? sign)

Note, on week 3+ you will assign mode modules to the developer.

The plan is:

1. Find modules to transfer ownership
2. Update docs if needed (or at least remove outdated info)
3. Share the assignment on Slack. Example:

   Congratulations, <name>! You are now the owner of the <module-name> module. 🎉

   Please read the module docs and code, and ask questions if needed. Since this is the best time to improve the module, please update the docs if needed.

   If you have any questions, feel free to ask me or <previous-owner>.

   What’s next: I will find a few technical tasks related to this module and assign them to you.

Frontend developers: performance audit

Ask to run a detailed performance audit of the site and apply fixes based on found issues. The goal here is to get the developer familiar with the codebase and the site plus make a new hire feel responsibility for the size performance.

There is also a task like "Meet quality tools" from the Asana project, it’s a perfect combination for this step to work on both: firstly learn our tools and then, based on research, apply fixes.

4. Assign technical tasks

Please make sure that the new developer always has tasks to work on, priorities and deadlines are clear, and the developer is not blocked.

See How to find technical tasks.

How to find technical tasks

Once modules are assigned, you can assign tasks to the developer. It’s better to do it using filter by GitHub module:X labels (e.g. module:masterclass).

First tasks should not require deep knowledge of the domain. The idea is to allow the developer to contribute to the codebase as soon as possible.

3rd week wrap up call with your Team Lead

Please share your feedback with your Team Lead about:

• Developer’s progress (hire slow fire fast: we should identify problems as early as possible)
• Onboarding experience (there is always to improve something in the process)