Host introductory workshops to enable developers

[marietheresa]

Jumpstart your change by showing everyone how to complete the required tasks step-by-step.¹

Keep these workshops under an hour to fit them into a typical workday more smoothly. I also like adding time for a quick Q&A to deal with the most pressing things immediately. Host these workshops multiple times - at least twice - over multiple weeks to maximize everyone's chances to take part. Provide your slides afterward.

Start with the boring stuff: requirements and deadlines. Who has to what when? Then, provide background on the feature (what can it do, what can't it do, how does it work)² before explaining the steps necessary to start using it. And then show a live demonstration of how to use the feature. Yes, that's repeating yourself slightly. And yes, that makes it easier for people to understand.

Footnotes

1. For why I think that this is the way, see Create your own internal workshops to teach developers  #8 ↩

2. For example, GitHub Advanced Security secret scanning works on partner secrets i.e. it won't classify your string as a secret just because you named it "secret". That's super helpful information for your developers for when they try it out for the first time, but not technically relevant for turning it on. ↩