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Checklist

The complete developer onboarding checklist.

Six phases, owner assignments, and cost-of-delay notes for critical items. Tick what is done; flag what is not.
P1

Pre-board

Day -7 to 0

10 items / 6 critical

Single highest-leverage phase. Eliminating day-one friction saves 2-5 days of mentor time and starts the productivity curve a week earlier.

  • Laptop ordered, imaged, shipped or desk-readyCRITICAL

    Delay cost: $1.5k-$3k per day late

  • All accounts created (GitHub, cloud, Slack, email, observability, SSO)CRITICAL
  • Repository read access granted before day oneCRITICAL
  • Buddy assigned and named in welcome emailCRITICAL
  • First-week calendar populated (intros, ceremonies, 30-min focus blocks)
  • Welcome packet with architecture map and reading list
  • Compliance documents (NDA, IP assignment, payroll) sent and signedCRITICAL
  • Team Slack channel announcement scheduled for day one
  • Dev container or bootstrap script tested by latest existing hire
  • First-week ticket selected (small docs / tests / bug, not customer-facing)CRITICAL
P2

Day one

W01 D1

8 items / 3 critical

Goal: end of day one with environment running, team met, and the first-week plan understood. No tickets shipped yet.

  • Manager 1:1 (60 min): role, expectations, 30-60-90 reviewCRITICAL
  • Buddy walk-through of repo and dev environmentCRITICAL
  • Team intro round (15 min standup-style)
  • Tooling tour: docs, runbooks, monitoring, on-call rota
  • First commit (PR to README, internal docs, or test)

    Delay cost: DORA elite teams target Day 1-2

  • Confirm laptop, accounts, and access all workingCRITICAL
  • Equipment, ergonomics, and benefits paperwork closed
  • Calendar reviewed and protected focus blocks confirmed
P3

Week one

W01

8 items / 5 critical

Goal: first PR merged. Architecture overview attended. Buddy and manager 1:1s established as recurring.

  • Architecture walkthrough recorded session watched + Q&ACRITICAL
  • Test suite runs locally, all environments accessibleCRITICAL
  • Branching strategy and PR workflow understoodCRITICAL
  • First non-trivial PR opened (small bug or test)CRITICAL
  • First sprint ceremony attended (planning, standup, demo)
  • Deployment pipeline walkthrough completed
  • Production runbook and incident response read
  • End-of-week retro with manager (15 min)CRITICAL
P4

Month one

W02-W04

8 items / 4 critical

Goal: first feature shipped to staging. Sprint ceremonies routine. 30-day check-in completed.

  • First feature PR reviewed and mergedCRITICAL
  • Independent staging deployment
  • Five+ key services / modules in the codebase mappedCRITICAL
  • Knowledge gaps identified, learning plan agreed
  • Security and compliance training completedCRITICAL
  • 30-day check-in: progress vs 30-60-90 planCRITICAL
  • Code review style understood (giving and receiving)
  • Comfortable in team Slack and async culture
P5

Month two

W05-W08

8 items / 3 critical

Goal: consistent sprint commitments met. Debugging production issues with minimal guidance. First on-call rotation eligibility.

  • Sprint commitments met two sprints in a rowCRITICAL
  • Production debugging without escalation
  • Writing meaningful tests alongside featuresCRITICAL
  • Contributing to technical design discussions
  • 60-day check-in: sprint metrics, blockers, growthCRITICAL
  • On-call shadow rotation completed
  • Identifying code quality improvements proactively
  • First quarterly OKR ownership
P6

Month three

W09-W12

8 items / 4 critical

Goal: 80-90% of team velocity. Owns at least one feature end-to-end. 90-day review and onboarding marked complete.

  • Velocity at 80-90% of team average for two sprintsCRITICAL
  • Owned at least one feature end-to-endCRITICAL
  • Contributing to retros and process improvements
  • First on-call primary rotation completed
  • 90-day review with managerCRITICAL
  • Onboarding officially marked completeCRITICAL
  • Eligible to interview new candidates
  • Continued-learning budget and growth plan confirmed

Cost of delay

One missed critical item: 1-3 weeks of ramp drag.

At a $130K average salary that is $3,000-$7,500 per delayed item. The pre-board phase is the single highest-leverage place to invest. Most engineering organisations could shorten ramp by a full week just by doing pre-board well.

FAQ

Common questions

What single missed item costs the most?+

Late laptop or missing access on day one. A single day of waiting costs $1,500-$3,000 in salary plus 2-5 hours of senior engineer time scrambling to fix it. The fix is pre-boarding starting at day -7.

Should every engineer get the same checklist?+

No. Use this as the spine and add 5-10 role-specific items. Frontend engineers need design tooling; platform engineers need cloud account access; mobile engineers need code-signing certificates. Senior engineers can skip some week-one items but need more architectural context.

How rigid should the phase gates be?+

Critical items are gates. Non-critical items are guidance. If a critical item slips by more than two days, the manager and tech lead should debug actively - it usually points to a process or capacity problem, not the new hire.

What if the new hire is missing the 30-day milestones?+

First check the codebase complexity and programme maturity. If both are 'good' and the new hire is still struggling, run a no-blame check-in. About one in five mid-level hires need a six-week extension; this is normal and not a red flag unless paired with disengagement.

Related briefs

30-60-90 plan template

Ramp curve timeline

Best practices

Tools to automate this

Calculate your cost

Remote-specific items

Updated 2026-04-28