The focus is on understanding the company's culture, products, and technologies through product demos and documentation reviews. This period is dedicated to building knowledge and establishing relationships within the team by diagnosing current challenges and workflows. The goal is to emerge with a clear picture of the engineering environment and identify immediate areas for improvement, setting the stage for strategic planning and team development in the following phases.

Plan

Demos

• Attend Product Demos: Schedule demonstrations of the company's products or services to gain a hands-on understanding of what the team builds and supports.
• Engineering Demos: Participate in or observe demos from the engineering team to understand the current projects, technologies, and challenges.

Documentation

• Review Technical Documentation: Dive into existing technical documentation, including architecture designs, API docs, and system workflows.
• Process Documentation: Familiarize myself with the engineering processes, coding standards, and review practices currently in place.

Diagnostics

• Team Meetings: Initiate conversations with individual team members and teams to diagnose their current challenges, workflows, and team dynamics.
• System Health Checks: Conduct or review existing diagnostics on the health of critical systems, including performance metrics, security posture, and technical debt.

Output

Knowledge and Insight

• Comprehensive Overview: A detailed understanding of the product lineup, technology stack, and engineering culture.
• Team Insight: A clear picture of the team structure, individual roles, talents, and areas for development.
• Process Evaluation: Initial assessment of the engineering processes, identifying strengths and areas for improvement.

Relationship Building

• Established Connections: Strong initial relationships with team members, peers, and key stakeholders across the company.
• Open Communication Channels: A foundation for ongoing dialogue with your team, encouraging transparency and feedback.

Initial Assessment Report

• Team and Technology Overview: A document summarizing your understanding of the team, technology, and processes.
• Immediate Opportunities: Identification of quick wins and areas requiring urgent attention, based on your diagnostics.
• Feedback Compilation: Summarized feedback from meetings with team members, highlighting common themes and suggestions.

Actionable Items

• Short-term Goals: A set of achievable goals for the next 60 days, based on your initial findings and the feedback received.
• Plan for Improvement: A preliminary plan addressing identified improvement areas, whether they be in team dynamics, processes, or technology usage.