Standard : Onboarding Time

Description

Onboarding Time measures how long it takes a new engineer to become productive—typically marked by their first meaningful contribution to the codebase or team. It reflects how effective your onboarding processes, documentation, and development environment are.

Reducing onboarding time improves delivery capacity, accelerates value delivery from new hires, and creates a more inclusive, welcoming team culture.

How to Use

What to Measure

  • Time from start date (or account creation) to first:
    • Merged pull request,
    • Production deployment,
    • Ticket completed,
    • or other team-defined "first meaningful contribution."

Formula (example)

Onboarding Time = Timestamp of First Contribution – Start Date

Instrumentation Tips

  • Use git and issue tracking systems (e.g. GitHub, Jira) to monitor onboarding milestones.
  • Set consistent definitions of “contribution” across teams.
  • Supplement quantitative data with feedback surveys on onboarding experience.

Why It Matters

  • Productivity: Faster onboarding accelerates team impact.
  • Retention: Good onboarding creates a strong first impression.
  • DevEx: Reveals bottlenecks in setup, tooling, access, or documentation.
  • Inclusivity: A clear, smooth onboarding process supports diverse hires.

Best Practices

  • Automate setup of development environments and tool access.
  • Maintain an onboarding playbook with key steps, contacts, and expectations.
  • Assign team buddies and schedule check-ins during ramp-up.
  • Track onboarding experience feedback through pulse surveys.
  • Review and iterate onboarding materials regularly.

Common Pitfalls

  • Assuming onboarding is complete after a laptop setup.
  • Treating onboarding as “read-only” instead of encouraging early contributions.
  • Failing to grant timely access to systems or repos.
  • Letting onboarding documentation fall out of date.

Signals of Success

  • New hires contribute within their first sprint or week.
  • Onboarding friction is regularly discussed and reduced.
  • Engineers rate onboarding highly in satisfaction surveys.
  • Time-to-impact shrinks consistently across teams.
  • [[Developer Satisfaction (DevEx NPS)]]
  • [[Cycle Time]]
  • [[Time to First Contribution]]
  • [[Documentation Coverage]]
  • [[Developer Environment Setup Time]]