session · onboarding

Onboarding shadow cycle

A new team member shadows one full cycle — brief through Epic kickoff, amigos, pull, code, review, release. Not doing the work — watching it, asking questions, building the mental model. Six weeks to read the chain artefacts and know what's missing.

When

Day one of a new hire's onboarding.
Continues for one full cycle — typically 4–6 weeks.

Who

The new team member — primary participant.
The PO — assigned mentor for the cycle.
The trio — collectively, with the new person rotating through their sessions.
A buddy from the same craft (a developer for a new developer, a designer for a new designer) — for the smaller daily questions.

Time-box

The shadow cycle is not a single session — it's a structured presence across one full chain rotation. Each session inside the cycle (observation, amigos, retro, etc.) is a touchpoint.

Inputs

The current cycle's Initiative Brief and Feature Brief.
The corpus — but not read cover-to-cover on day one. Selectively, in service of the cycle being shadowed.

The six-week scaffold

Week	What the new person does
Week 1	Reads the corpus's volumes' openings only (an hour total). Pairs with PO on a Discovery session. Joins amigos. Watches.
Weeks 2–3	Pulls one small story alongside an experienced developer (or PO, or designer, depending on craft). PO walkthrough is longer for this first story. Amigos session is more explicit. First PR review is gentler.
Week 4	Owns a story end to end. Files their first bug they author. Writes a model-update line.
Week 6	Joins their first retro as a participant, not a guest. Writes a one-page note: "what about the chain felt unclear in my first month." That note feeds the next onboarding update.

Outputs

A real contribution — one story pulled, scenarios written, code shipped under review.
A first-month note — feedback to the chain about what was unclear, what needs better artefacts.
(Most important) the new person can read the chain artefacts and name what's missing without being told.

What good looks like

The new person says, somewhere in week three or four, "I think the Feature Brief is missing the persona's vocabulary — I keep getting confused about whether 'submission' means draft or final." That is the signal that onboarding worked. The new person can read the chain critically; they know what good looks like; they have a model.

The corpus is read in service of the cycle. Week 1 the new person reads Volume II's opening because the current cycle is in shaping. Week 3 they read Volume IV's pipeline section because they're pushing PRs. Week 6 they read Volume V's retro section because they're attending their first retro. The corpus teaches itself through contact.

Anti-pattern

The new person reads the corpus front-to-back before doing anything. Two weeks pass; they've absorbed nothing because they have no concrete attachment to the practices. Fix: one cycle, witnessed, is worth more than all five volumes read. Shadow first; read in service of what's happening.

A second anti-pattern: the buddy ghosts. The new person has questions, no one to ask, learns by guessing, builds a slightly-wrong model that takes a year to correct. Fix: the buddy slot is named and protected. 15 minutes a day for the first week; declining cadence after.

A third: no first-month note. The new person becomes useful, the onboarding fades into normal work, the next new hire encounters the same gaps the previous one did. Fix: the one-page note is the onboarding's output. The chain learns from new arrivals the way it learns from anyone — by writing it down.

Onboarding shadow cycle ​

When ​

Who ​

Time-box ​

Inputs ​

The six-week scaffold ​

Outputs ​

What good looks like ​

Anti-pattern ​

See also ​