AGILE ONBOARDING
Onboarding. Get A Buddy — Peer Mentoring FTW!
Peer mentoring as an efficient way to onboard New Joiners
If you ever felt “forever alone” in your new job experience, I bet it was because you didn’t get a “buddy”. Having a peer, a colleague, who will walk you through the technicalities of your new role and show you the ropes is gold. Let’s see what is the value of designating a “buddy” for the company and for the new joiner.
Who is a “buddy”?
A “buddy” is a person designated by the manager, someone responsible for the onboarding, or the development team themselves to help the new joiner ramp up efficiently. It is mostly about the technicalities and any role-specific details which I will cover in a moment. However, a part of the role is also to hang out with the new joiner, make them feel welcomed and taken care of. The more proactive and curious the “buddy” is, the more engaging the experience gets for both parties. All this has a lot of value for the new joiner, the buddy, and the company as a whole.
Why get a “buddy”?
First of all, we make sure the new joiners start providing value for the company sooner rather than later but also we increase the ownership and the engagement of the current employees. Anybody can take on the role of a “buddy”. I would even go further and make a round for everyone to do it because it can be beneficial for the team members. They need to know what is important to pass on and learn some soft skills. If one is to onboard someone, first, one needs to understand all of it themselves. There is a learning process involved along with organizing the knowledge in one’s head and on a piece of paper — here goes another checklist. Never underestimate the power of a good checklist! What’s more, in case you have a candidate for a senior developer or a leader position, this might be a great opportunity for them to improve their skills in teaching and mentoring.
Never underestimate the power of a good checklist.
Prepare a cheat sheet — the desirable hard skills
Irrelevant of their role in the company it would be great to designate a buddy for everyone. It is just good practice, like getting a guide to show you around a new town you just moved to. Doesn’t it make a difference to have an acquaintance in a city you just moved to or in the same neighborhood? They can show you the ropes, indicate how to best do all the paperwork, and show you the best restaurants around.
Assigning a buddy is an exceptionally good practice for development teams. It is because each company has slightly different ways of doing the same thing — coding. There are different tools, processes, working agreements, development practices, etc.
An example list of things to go over with the new joiner would be as listed in my previous video about the New Joiner Onboarding. In summary, it would be to show the new joiner the code, explain all the development environments, and working agreements the team has like a pull request checklist or a Definition of Done, etc. Pair-programming could be a leading practice here, especially the Strong-Style or Driver and Navigator Pairing. I explain why it is profitable to do pairing and the different styles in my video below.
How to do it — the desirable soft skills
Here we need some level of proactivity from the “buddy”. They become co-responsible for the onboarding of the new joiner and need to make sure the new joiner gets fully operative by removing any blockers and impediments to their progress.
Here’s what to take into account:
1. Be proactive, be available— set daily meetings with the new joiner, they can get more scarce as the time passes. Yet at the very start, it will be of mighty help for them. Just knowing they can reach out to you after the company onboarding is over and they lose the other contact, will matter a lot. If you set up a daily meeting you will avoid many interruptions for yourself. People are different and have different needs, some need more handholding than others. If you funnel the questions to this daily meeting once a day, then you will get fewer interruptions. That is good advice not only for the “buddies” but for any people who mentor others or have plenty of specialized knowledge to share.
2. Help them out with the first meetings — ask if they need any help with the first 1:1s they are to schedule to get to know the team. You can offer to assist the first ones with them to break the ice. The same goes for the dailies, offer help and explain what is expected. Ask your Scrum Master, if you have one, to help with the team events.
3. Help to unblock — ask if there are any blockers or problems the new hire has. It doesn’t mean you have to unblock them. You have more context and know who to ask, this can be a mighty help for someone who is lost and doesn’t even know where to begin.
4. Try not to overwhelm — we need to introduce new things step by step. When you’re new at a company everything is new and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Try to think about what is indispensable and must be introduced at first and what can wait a couple more weeks, and prioritize.
5. Pre-planning — whether you are working with Scrum, Kanban, or waterfall with Sprints, it might be a good idea to go over some stories implementation before the Sprint starts. It makes sense to prepare one or two small stories for the new joiner when they join the team, so they can quickly start the “real work”. I mean, it. In my team, we regretted forgetting about this each time a new team member came along.
6. Hang out — as a guide in the new city, try to guide the new joiner through the company. If you are in the office, grab a coffee with them and go for a lunch with other team members. And if you are only on zoom, do some small talk and learn about each other, who they are, where they came from and what they like doing in the free time. This will help you both create a connection and understand each other better. And those connections are essential for building an awesome team.
To summarize
Having a buddy is not only great for the new joiner because they won’t feel “forever alone”. But it is especially interesting for anyone who wants to progress their career, e.g. into a leadership role. It requires good soft skills, empathy, teaching, and mentoring skills. Basically a lot of patience. So it is a great way to check if people who seek a leadership path in their career are actually a good fit for it.
The institution of a “buddy” cannot be overestimated. Wherever I’m going to a new company I am asking my manager to assign a “buddy” for me or just find someone to be that person for me. In the end, not asking all the important questions that come up goes against an effective onboarding.
