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OnboardingChecklist.md

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Onboarding Checklist

Instructions

When someone new joins the cloud.gov team:

  1. Create a new issue in cg-product called "Ramp up [person's name] on cloud.gov team".
  2. View the raw source of this file.
  3. Copy everything below the line into the new issue's body.
  4. Replace "NewPerson" with the new person's name.
  5. Replace "Buddy" with the onboarding buddy's name.
  6. Delete any checklists irrelevant for the new person's skill domain (theme).
  7. Submit the issue.
  8. Assign the issue to the person who bravely volunteered to be the new person's Onboarding Buddy.
  9. Put the issue into the In Progress pipeline in Favro on the cloud.gov Program Program Board.

In order to get NewPerson productively contributing to the cloud.gov team, Buddy should help NewPerson complete a prescribed set of tasks that will bring them up to speed.

Directions:

NewPerson and Buddy: Try to go through your checklists in order.

Buddy: If you can’t complete any of the items on your checklist personally, you are responsible for ensuring that someone with the correct access completes that item.

New Person checklist

Getting to know cloud.gov

  • Take judicious notes on what about this onboarding process or cloud.gov is confusing or frustrating. If you notice a problem (especially with things like documentation), you are more than welcome to fix it! At the very least, please share this information with your buddy (or someone) at some point so we can make the team/platform better. (You can also file issues and pull requests on the template for Onboarding issues.)
  • Figure out who your onboarding buddy is (they should reach out to you) and make sure this issue is assigned to them.
  • Read the team onboarding document for more context about cloud.gov.
  • Bookmark the pertinent links listed here.
  • Read the "What is it?" presentation for a rundown of what cloud.gov is and does (specifically read slides 1-37; the rest are somewhat outdated)
  • Read through the Overview section of cloud.gov for a broader understanding of cloud.gov, especially as we present it to potential customers/users.
  • Read the January 2016 cloud.gov "Executive Business Case" document for greater context about cloud.gov's potential impact in government.
  • Deploy a sample application to cloud.gov to get familiar with the basics of the PaaS from a user's perspective.
  • Sign up for a Favro account using your GSA Google Account. Add a profile photo and add your name/Github handle using this standard so you receive notifications on any linked Github issues: "[Github handle] - [your name]", e.g. "suprenant - Andrew Suprenant".
  • Check out the Favro cloud.gov Program board and make sure you have access to all our Favro boards.
  • Check out the roadmap to get a high-level view of recently-completed, in-progress, and upcoming features.
  • Read the Delivery Process document to learn about how we work.
  • Read our service disruption guide to learn how we handle customer-facing service disruptions.
  • Join the cloud.gov team Google Group so you can participate in teamwide internal communication.
  • Join the cloud.gov inquiries Google Group so you can keep apprised of prospective new clients.
  • Bookmark the cloud.gov Google Drive folder - that's where we put cloud.gov docs. If you create or move a doc there, it'll get the right access permissions for 18F team members to be able to view and edit it.
  • Consider joining Cloud Foundry's Slack channels (we sometimes talk to folks in #gov and #gov-private – you'll need a cloud.gov team member to invite you to the latter).
  • If you haven't already, request a license for Microsoft Office - this is helpful for working with compliance documentation.
  • Once you've finished the checklists below, make suggestions for steps that would have improved your onboarding experience as pull requests on the onboarding checklist template used to make this issue.

Required items for all team members

These items help us fulfill security and compliance requirements (including for FedRAMP). If you get stuck, or if these requirements are confusing, ask for help from your buddy or in a cloud.gov channel.

Ensure you know what's happening on the team:

  • Subscribe to the cloud.gov team calendar (click the + in the bottom right) so you know when assorted team meetings are happening in the various squads. Tip: When you plan Out of Office time, make a calendar event for that on the cloud.gov calendar so that your teammates know you'll be away.
  • Subscribe (through the GitHub watch function) to the cg-site GitHub repository notifications.
  • Ask Program Manager or Director for access to the cg-supportstream Slack channel.

Learn our policies and procedures:

Theme-specific items

For explanations of our theme names, see this glossary.

Platform-specific items

Customer-specific items

If developing
For review

Business unit-specific items

  • Bookmark the BizOps board.
  • Join #products-platforms and all of the #cloud-gov-[everything] channels (it's ok to mute or leave some later).
  • Ask Program Manager or Director for access (and ownership if appropriate) to the cloud-gov-inquiries, cloud-gov-support, cloud-gov-notifications, and cloud-gov-emergency groups.
  • Read how the cloud-gov-emergency group works, and set up push notifications for these emails from your work smartphone if appropriate for your role.
  • Ask #admins-salesforce for access to Salesforce.
  • In Salesforce, bookmark the cloud.gov opportunities report.
  • [If not also Cloud Ops] Ask Program Manager or Director for view-only access to admin UI.
  • Ask #acquisition for the Acquisition NDA so you can sign it (if you haven't already).
  • [If not also Cloud Ops] If appropriate for your role, ask for access to billing info in commercial AWS account from Program Manager or Director.
New Director (System Owner) items
  • Ask #tock to list you as the project contact for cloud.gov lines.
  • Ask previous Director to give you Owner access to Nessus Manager.
  • Ask previous Director to give you Owner access in Zendesk.
  • Ask previous Director to give you AWS account ownership for GovCloud.
  • Ask Program Manager or previous Director to give you cloud.gov calendar ownership.
  • Ask Program Manager or previous Director to give you owner permission on the Google Groups.
  • Ask Cloud Ops for read-write access to Admin UI.
  • Review the GSA Information Technology (IT) Security Policy to understand our responsibilities as part of GSA.
  • Review the cloud.gov System Security Plan version 1.33.

Non team specific items

Note: These are items that do not fall into the boundary of work for a specific team. However, please consult your onboarding buddy to verify that your work relates to these items prior doing these two checklists.

Compliance-specific items

Services-specific items

Buddy checklist

  • Introduce yourself to the new team member and give them some of your background so they know who you are.
  • Identify a straightforward, well-groomed story in progress that involves their skills domain, schedule a meeting with the owner for an introduction (if it's not you), and setup pairing sessions several times in the first week on the project.
  • Identify a straightforward, well-groomed first story, ideally something they could conceivably complete in their first two/three weeks using their existing skills. Discuss the context with them, then make them the assignee for the card.
  • Discuss suggestions for how the onboarding experience could have been improved and open as PRs on the onboarding template.
  • Ask the Program Manager or Director to add the person to Zendesk, so they can see how we handle non-18F support and read technical discussions happening with outside groups.
  • Invite them to the private Slack channel cg-supportstream, used for backchanneling on support interactions.
  • Ask the Program Manager or Director to add them to the 18F organization in Favro.

Required items for all team members

These items help us fulfill security and compliance requirements (including for FedRAMP).

  • Make sure they're in the list of people working on the project.
  • Add their name, whether they're Cloud Ops (Platform), and the date they joined the team to the training tracker. Copy the formulas for the due dates from an existing row (grab the "corner" of the cells and pull down).
  • As they complete training, fill out their completion dates in the training tracker.
  • Add them to the @cloud-gov-team in Slack’s Team Directory.
  • Add them to the recurring cloud.gov meetings that are relevant for them in the team calendar.
  • Ask one of our cloud-gov team Github Maintainers (@mogul, @LinuxBozo, or @afeld) to add them to the @18F/cloud.gov team on GitHub. If they are unable to help in a timely manner, ask #admins-github to add them.

Platform-specific required items

  • Help them review and understand the responsibilities of becoming a Cloud Operations team member, as listed in our SSP.
  • Ask #admins-github to have them added to the @18F/cloud-gov-ops team on GitHub. (For contractors: Confirm they have cleared GSA security review before doing this one!)
  • If the new person is a contractor, ask #admins-github to have them added to the @18F/cloud-gov-contractors team on GitHub.
  • Add them to @cg-operators in Slack’s User Groups.
  • Grant them access to the following:
    • AWS Accounts via the AWS web console (not Terraform) and provide one-time credentials with Toaster/Fugacious
      • AWS GovCloud
      • AWS East tied to GovCloud
      • AWS Admin Access
      • Note: AWS user names should be identical across accounts so that permissions can be correctly managed by terraform
    • Nessus Manager GUI
    • New Relic
    • PagerDuty
    • StatusPage
  • Make them an admin of the platform.
  • Add them to the cloud-gov-operators organization in cloud.gov.
  • Take them through AWS onboarding.
  • Give them a walkthrough of cloud.gov from an architecture and repository perspective, focusing on SSP diagrams, external git repository and bosh.io dependencies, and our continuous delivery process with Concourse.