Plan to Integrate New Team Members

You can speed up the integration of new people—or the same people in new roles—by planning for the transition. Start with the basics: without a place to sit, a phone, and access to email, a new hire is invisible to the organization.

Create and use a checklist for new hires.

Use the checklist ​Welcoming New Hires​ to verify you’ve addressed the logistics. Have the new hire’s office ready on the first day.

Spend time setting the context on the first day.

Discuss your specific context with the person in transition: the product, the departmental goals and especially how that person’s work fits into those goals.Are You Ready? [Bol03]

See the Work with Big Visible Charts

Maybe you’ve seen this scenario on a project: At 10 AM, a developer strides up to a large wall chart covered with cards arranged in columns. She moves two cards from the In Progress column to the Completed column. She looks at the cards in the In Queue column, signs her name to a card, and moves it to the In Progress column. Throughout the day, developers and testers repeat the process.

Around 3 PM, a tester walks to the task board and places a red dot on a task card in the In Progress column. At 4 PM, the team gathers round the task board. Seeing the red dot—indicating a task is in trouble—they gather information and start analyzing the problem. Two developers head off together to work on the problem.

The people on this team know what they have to do, and they do it. They don’t need or want much day-to-day guidance. Their manager focuses on removing obstacles, coaching, and developing the capacity of the group.

This isn’t magic. People know what to do and do it when managers use techniques that help people see the status of the work, planned, in progress, and completed. Big Visible Charts (BVCs) posted for all to see fit the bill.

One manager we know uses a hand-drawn matrix on a whiteboard to keep the project portfolio visible. The left-most column is the list of projects. Each of the remaining columns represents a week. For each person on his team, he has seven magnets; the magnets show which projects each person will work on in the next seven weeks.

When his manager demanded more work from his group, he walked her over to the whiteboard, and asked, “What don’t you want me to do? We can unstaff anything you like to staff something else.” Because the data was right there in front of her eyes, the senior manager could see she would have to make trade-offs, not just add a task.

BVCs aren’t just for projects tasks and project data. We use them for workgroup trends, defect trends, defect density—anything that everyone in the group needs to see. Don’t worry about having polished, computer-drawn charts; visibility is the goal, not sophisticated presentation.

Assign a buddy.

Especially with a new hire, assign someone who can show the person where the cafeteria, coffee, supplies, and restrooms are.Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies, and Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People [Rot04a] Have the buddy walk the person through the technical pieces of the job, too.

Expect to re-form teams.

Anytime team membership changes, you have a new team. You may need to revisit some earlier stages of team formation—albeit briefly. Give the team time and support to become productive again.

• • •
..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
3.133.134.151