Establishing an onboarding program for new members of a software engineering team

• Main Author: Evangelista, Armando Humberto C.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2018
• Subjects: Employee orientation; Human Resources Management; Training and Development
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/6438; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_masteral/article/13516/viewcontent/Evangelista_11680105_IAR2_Redacted.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

This Action Research attempts to establish an onboarding program for members of a Software Engineering team that is developing and maintaining one of the country’s online job recruitment platforms. During the construction of the issue, it was found out that the reason one of our engineers had difficulties understanding the platform was because he was not properly onboarded. Further investigation revealed that other engineers experienced the same issue to varying degrees. With his insights, and the input of other people in the company, we managed to identify the items that engineers needed to be onboarded on and establish an objective-driven, time-bound process. As we investigated the issue and took action, we realized that we did not give much attention to this process. We also realized that we must revisit the “engineers need to learn to swim” mentality. We learned that while we expect engineers to learn on their own, we also need to give them guidance on what to learn and in some cases, how to learn. In revisiting these assumptions and applying the appropriate changes within our organization, we’ve taken a step into improving the work experience of new engineers in the team.