Onboarding is the process of introducing new team members to a project or a company. You probably knew that part. You probably also know that onboarding is an important part of growing a team, which itself is crucial to any software development process. Bringing on new team members can be a major challenge for any company, and that can be especially true when a team is remote or outsourced.
How do you bring people up to speed efficiently? How do you identify who should go on what team? Who should be in charge? How do you get all the moving parts in a complex situation to integrate smoothly?
There are many different approaches to software development team onboarding, but one of the most innovative and effective methods is team spawning. What’s that, you ask? It’s a relatively old concept that’s being adapted in a new setting. So, let’s discuss what team spawning is and how it can revolutionize the software development onboarding process.
Introduction to Onboarding in Outsourcing
Building an efficient team for a software development project can be tricky. It’s especially tricky if the project in question relies on cutting-edge tools, is a relatively niche project, or requires very specific skill sets. Finding the right team members for a project like that is no easy task, so there are many possible approaches to get it right.
Team spawning is quickly growing in popularity, and for good reason. It’s likely to be one of the major trends in software development over the next few years. Let’s take a look at just what it is.
What is Team Spawning?
When leaders pass on knowledge, everyone wins.
Team spawning is a type of software onboarding process that is gaining popularity among developers. It involves creating a group of leaders who are tasked with helping to onboard new developers. These leaders are already experienced with the tools at hand and/or the project itself, and should have first-hand knowledge of just what’s going on.
Once these leaders have been identified, the team spawning process assigns a leader to each team. This leader is responsible for guiding the team through the onboarding process. The leader will provide information and resources to the team, as well as answer any questions they may have.
The team spawning process has been proven to be an effective method of onboarding new developers or other team members. It helps to ensure that the new people are able to quickly and easily understand the project, as well as how to get the most out of their time.
This is actually a very old system, but it’s being used in a very new environment. The team spawning process very much resembles the guild structures of medieval Europe, or simply apprenticeships. The leaders in the project or company pass along their knowledge to their team members organically and naturally. It’s just people learning from each other — but with a slightly fancier name and more complex structure.
Benefits of Team Spawning for Software Onboarding
Team spawning is an effective way to onboard new team members and has several benefits over traditional onboarding methods. Here are some of the key benefits of team spawning for software development:
- Faster onboarding: Team spawning helps speed up onboarding by having experienced team members help onboard new staff, cutting down on time spent on the learning curve.
- More personalized onboarding: Team spawning helps make the onboarding process more personalized. Experienced staff can provide tailored advice and answer any specific questions that new recruits may have.
- Increased engagement: Team spawning helps increase engagement via the human element of hands-on tutoring and guidance.
- Reduced costs: Team spawning can help reduce onboarding costs by reducing the need for expensive and time-consuming training services.
Additionally, team spawning allows new teams to spool up much more quickly when needed. Because priorities and timelines often change in software development, team spawning allows for more flexibility in creating and expanding teams to adapt to changes.
How to Implement Team Spawning
A team should have a dedicated space, whether physical or virtual.
Implementing team spawning for onboarding is relatively straightforward. Here are the steps:
- Identify team members: The first step is to identify the team members who will be helping to onboard new users. This should include experienced users who are familiar with the project or work at hand and can help to explain how it works as well as the new person’s role.
- Set up a team environment: Once the team has been identified, it is important to set up an environment where team members can work together. This could include a dedicated Slack channel, an office, or any place — physical or digital — to collaborate. .
- Assign roles: Leaders must assign clear roles to each team member. This involves the leader themselves, who is responsible for guiding the team through the onboarding process.
- Monitor and adjust: Once the team is up and running, it is important to monitor the process and make adjustments as necessary. This could include changing the roles of team members or providing additional resources to help them onboard new users.
By following these steps, developers can easily set up a team spawning process for software development onboarding.
Challenges of Software Onboarding
Although team spawning can be an effective way to onboard new team members, there are still some challenges that developers need to be aware of. Here are some of the key challenges of software onboarding:
- Finding experienced employees: One of the biggest challenges of team spawning is finding experienced employees who are willing and able to help onboard new users. This is where an outsourcing partner is key. Having experienced staff in place to train new members is much easier for an experienced, professional software team who do this sort of thing regularly.
- Managing workloads: Naturally, with different assignments on spawned teams, workloads can look quite different. New members have lots of learning to do and leaders have lots of, well, leading to do. This can lead to uneven workloads, which is especially true if team members are working remotely or on different schedules. This problem is solved for a client when they’re working with an outsourcing company, which will handle all workload responsibilities and make sure team members are acclimating at the expected rate.
These are just a few of the challenges that developers need to be aware of when onboarding new users.
Team Spawning Is a Smart Choice
For those looking to pass on information quickly in a high-context environment, team spawning is an excellent way forward. It’s becoming increasingly popular among software development companies because it improves efficiency, helps team members create natural relationships through which information is passed, and overall strengthens a team. Team spawning can also be used to help customers get used to software via a software onboarding process.
All in all, this is just another example of people learning from others. Those with a creative mind could see how team spawning resembles schools in many ways — with a teacher, students, and a dedicated space like a classroom to work in. That’s an age-old and robust system, and it’s used everywhere because it works.
We love systems that work just as much as we love making software that works. We also realize that everything we make is for people — software is simply another tool in the hands of an increasingly complex species. That’s us.
If you want to know more about how we work or are curious to talk to us about a project, reach out to us today. We love passing on knowledge and helping clients reach their goals — since helping each other out is what we’re all here for.
