Onboarding Checklist

NOTE
This is currently a Work In Progress

This is a curated task list aimed at developers joining the team. It covers general tasks that everyone should complete, followed by role-specific checklists for software developers, data engineers, and DevOps engineers.

General (everyone)

People and access

[ ] Meet with your technical lead to understand the team structure and current priorities
[ ] Meet with the product manager to understand the product vision and roadmap
[ ] Create a GitHub account (or use an existing one) and ask your technical lead to get you added to the organisation with the correct permissions — remove any personal access tokens from an existing account before using it
[ ] Get access to the relevant Slack channels — ask your technical lead if you are unsure which ones

Reading

[ ] Read the Planning Data Handbook
[ ] Read the key development principles
[ ] Review the deploy and release procedure
[ ] Review the Pull Request best practices
[ ] Review the CI/CD strategy
[ ] Read through Onboarding in Data Operations for a broad overview of the platform and the questions worth asking as you get started

Software Developer (frontend and/or backend)

Machine setup

[ ] Run through the Set Up for Mac tutorial to install the base-level dependencies needed across most of our repositories

Key repositories to clone

[ ] Planning Data platform — the main website
[ ] Submit service — tools to help data providers submit URLs for collection

Get the applications running

[ ] Follow the Submit Service tutorial for an overview of the application architecture and instructions to get it running locally

Best practices and conventions

[ ] Review the best practices documentation — all projects should follow these
[ ] Confirm you can start a service using the standard make targets:
```
make init
make run
```

Data Engineer

Machine setup

[ ] Run through the Set Up for Mac tutorial to install the base-level dependencies needed across most of our repositories

Key reading

[ ] Review the data architecture overview
[ ] Work through the Data Operations Manual — pay particular attention to the Key Concepts and How-To Guides sections

Key repositories to clone

[ ] Digital Land Python — the core CLI and data processing library
[ ] Makerules — shared make targets used across data pipeline repositories
[ ] Specification — dataset specifications and schemas
[ ] AWS Batch Docker — Dockerfiles and entrypoints for batch processing tasks

Get oriented

[ ] Run through the Running a Collection tutorial
[ ] Confirm you can set up a repository locally using:
```
make init
make test
```

DevOps

Key reading

[ ] Review the infrastructure documentation in full, including deployment diagrams, code structure, security approach, and how-to guides
[ ] Review the CI/CD strategy in depth — you will own and maintain these pipelines
[ ] Review the alerting and monitoring strategy
[ ] Review the architecture checklist

Key repositories

[ ] Clone the infrastructure repository and review the structure with your technical lead — this is the primary repo you will work in
[ ] Review the Makerules repository as it underpins the CI/CD workflows across all other repositories
[ ] Review the AWS Batch Docker repository

Access and tooling

[ ] Set up AWS Vault for secure credential management
[ ] Confirm access to the relevant AWS environments with your technical lead