Onboarding: How Newcomers Integrate into an Agile Project Team

Abstract

Although a stable team is deemed optimal for agile project success, new team members need to join ongoing agile projects. Newcomers must rapidly assimilate into the organisational and project environment while learning how to contribute effectively to the project and integrate into the team without seriously interrupting project progress. This paper addresses how newcomers integrate into an established agile project team and the challenges newcomers and the team face during this process. This paper is a single case study of a co-located agile project team in a large IT department who regularly onboard inexperienced newcomers. We found a mixture of traditional onboarding practices and specific agile practices contribute to the onboarding process. Onboarding challenges include empowerment and mindset change, accommodating part-timers, conveying agile principles, and adjusting to changes in team composition.

An onboarding model for integrating newcomers into agile project teams

“…We also found adjustments that had to be made by newcomers and the workplace to support integration, some of which were particularly related to an agile context. This paper extends a previous publication (Gregory et al, 2020) by adding more detail about the study, specifically the literature, research method, and participants. It also contains a more detailed presentation and discussion of the findings which leads to a new model of onboarding not previously presented.…”

Retaining Healthcare Workers: A Systematic Review of Strategies for Sustaining Power in the Workplace

“…Multiple records have described that new nurses feel overwhelmed in the transition from student towards their new role as nurse [ 57 , 62 , 75 , 77 ], which suggests supporting those healthcare workers during this transition period can be beneficial. In addition, onboarding, the terminology used to describe new employees joining and integrating into the organization [ 85 ], is an important item.…”

The dynamic versus the stable team: The unspoken question in large‐scale agile development

“…Social and/or psychological effects of team stability Chiocchio et al, 17 Ji and Yan, 47 Rico et al, 48 Rejab et al, 49 Prikladnicki et al, 50 Britto et al 51 Supporting structures and task matching Lee et al, 52 Taylor, 53 Grass et al, 54 Dusenberry et al 55 Team coordination, formation and onboarding Berntzen et al, 56 Britto et al, 51 Ancona and Caldwell, 42 Prikladnicki et al, 50 Gregory et al, 57 Garnier et al, 58 Gregory et al, 59 Buchan et al 60 Impact of stability on team outcomes Zhou et al, 16 Chiocchio et al, 17 Ça glayan et al, 61 Cavalcante et al, 62 Rejab et al, 49 Fang, 63 Dayan and Benedetto, 64 Prikladnicki et al, 50 Ancona and Caldwell, 42 Crowder and Friess, 65 Sosa and Danilovic 66 Impact of composition and roles on team outcomes…”

“…Other sources regard members joining and leaving teams as a natural part of self‐organization, allowing the team to adapt as conditions change 69 and identify factors such as team context, support, and leadership 54 as factors with considerably greater impact on outcomes than team longevity 55 . In studying challenges to team onboarding, Gregory et al 57 find that the majority of challenges are related to onboarding developers—particularly junior ones—who are unfamiliar with Agile approaches and need to adjust to the mindset of Agile principles, rather than any disturbance of the team dynamics as such (in a similar vein, adding new members who lack the appropriate skills will not improve team performance 58 ). They also identify multiple activities and principles that support onboarding of newcomers to a team, 59 which suggests that teaming should be considered an organizational capability in its own right and that it is a process that may be either fast or slow depending on how actively it is supported.…”