Onboarding checklist

When someone new joins the team:

• Create a new GitHub issue in this repository called Onboard [NewPerson] to NRRD website project team.
• View the raw source of this file.
• Copy everything below the line into the new issue's body.
• Replace NewPerson with the new person's name.
• Replace Buddy with the onboarding buddy's name.
• Update links to recent research with the two most recent studies. Full list of research here *Update link to recent roadmap.
• Delete any checklists irrelevant for the new person's skill domain.
• Submit the issue.
• Assign the issue to the person who volunteered to be the new person's Onboarding Buddy.

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

Directions

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.

NewPerson: Take judicious notes on what about this onboarding process or the NRRD website 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 so we can make the team/platform better. You can also file issues and pull requests as soon as you feel comfortable doing so.

Get access to GitHub so that you can complete this checklist

• Create a GitHub account that you can use for government work
  GitHub is a platform for collaborative web development.

  • Follow 18F’s setup instructions to create a GitHub account, or link an existing account to your government work.

  • Let the Product Manager know when your account has been created, and what your username is. Ask them to add you as a member or contributor to the project repository so that you can make contributions, and to add you to the ONRR GitHub organization.

  • Subscribe to the doi-extractives-data repository (through the GitHub watch feature) to get notifications of project activity.

  • Ask the product manager to request you be given access for federalist.

Get access to other project tools and services that the team uses to communicate

• Buddy: Ask the 18F team PM to invite NewPerson to the #nrrd-partners slack channel

  • NewPerson: Accept the slack invitation via email, and set up your Slack account with 2-factor authentication. Set up your profile with your name, location, and any other information you wish to provide.

• Log in to ZenHub with your GitHub account so that you can view the project planning board
  Select the “Public Repos Only” option when prompted to log in. We use ZenHub as a project management tool to track tasks. ZenHub connects to GitHub and displays the issues from the the project’s repository in columns that show its progress—Unprioritized, Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, In Progress, Awaiting Review, or Done.

Learn about the project background and how the team works

• Read the Product Framing document

• Read about the current status of the project on the homepage of the wiki

• Buddy: Add NewPerson to the project team list

• Read the Basics for making distributed work work

• Meet with the Product Manager for an introduction to project routines, expectations, and rituals

  • Discuss NRRD project meetings: what they are, how they are run, and how the new person is expected to participate at each
  • Review the most recent NRRD project roadmap

Design checklist

• Learn about what you need to know about doing design and research in the federal government

• Learn about our user research practice
  Our research plans and findings are documented in the open as part of our GitHub repository. You can find the research at any time by changing the branch in the repo to the “research” branch.

  • Read about our NRRD's Research norms and processes
  • Learn about our user types
  • Read through the research work from a few recent sprints. Each sprint has its own folder that contains a plan and the results:

    • Research and findings from BodaciousBaboon

    • Read through the rest at your own pace

  You can find everything together in the branch index: https://github.com/ONRR/doi-extractives-data/tree/research

• Read the design principles for the NRRD site
  The design principles are on the front page of the styleguide. The styleguide is a collection of interaction and design patterns used across the site and the style rules that determine the site’s visual identity.

• Review the content guide to get a sense of how to write and talk about NRRD content

• Read about how to design with NRRD data

• If you are new to GitHub, learn about how it works, and how to make it work for you
  GitHub is traditionally a development tool, not a design tool. It may take some time and experimenting to figure out how to work within its framework as a designer. Some places to start:

  • Understand the GitHub workflow that code-based changes to the website go through.
    Even if you won’t be contributing code changes, it helps to share the same vocabulary as your team.
  • Learn about GitHub issues
    Issues are how the team tracks tasks to work on or bugs to fix.
  • Understand the basics of writing in Markdown
    Markdown is a lightweight way of creating formatting for text. Using certain characters tells the text to render as headlines, bullets, etc. It will be helpful to know the basics of Markdown because GitHub uses it as the default syntax for writing issues (although they have recently implemented a WYSIWYG toolbar that helps!)
    • Try this Markdown tutorial

• Get access to Adobe design tools so that you can access the design files if you need them

• Get access to the NRRD Portal Google Drive @mcharg is the owner of the folder, but anyone on the team should be able to add you.

• Join the UX Community of Practice email listserv (optional)
  A mailing list of fellow UX designers across government. Useful for sharing resources and learning about challenges shared by other practitioners.

Development checklist

• Install required developers tools * - node * - visual studio * - docker * - git

• Complete the Gatsby Fundamentals Tutorial https://www.gatsbyjs.org/tutorial/

• Clone repository locally git clone https://github.com/ONRR/doi-extractives-data.git

• Git application running locally in develop mode.

  • install dependencies: npm install
  • ** work through any dependency installation issues. ** Hint: if dependency fails install individually track down any issues. Example: sharp fails to compile, try compiling individually, research see it depends on libvis, install libvis and libvis-dev. Note warning sharp doesn't have prebuilt binaries in latest branch of node. Solution downgrade node to LTS.
  • start application: gatsby develop

• ** Create new branch for developing on **. - get issue from issue zenhub. - create branch with name that starts with issue number - push branch remotely for senior developer to review.