How a small company used Agile methodology to recruit and onboard 21 employees in only 8

weeks

IntroductionTechnical Writer / Instructional DesignerTechnical Publications Team Lead at

Perceptive InformaticsAgile Team MemberCertified Scrum Master

What I’ll tell you aboutWhy we needed to increase our staffPotential impedimentsThe EPIC user stories we created and

accomplishedHow we did the workWhat went wellWhat we need to improve

Why increase your staff?New, large-scale, multi-million dollar project

Add 6 – 8 major features12 months from start to releaseStart date of July 7th

Compete in the market space or go home

What we needed to accomplishRecruit 21 employees

Developers (8)DBA (1)SQA (8)Business Analysts (1)Technical Writers (3)

Begin recruiting on May 24Have all employees on-boarded and trained

by July 12

Problems to be solvedNo existing on-boarding processNo formal new hire training programInefficient recruiting processNo dedicated training departmentNo workstations, phones, or computers

Use Agile!

Our Epic storiesRecruit and hire new employeesPrepare facilities

WorkstationsPhonesHardwareSoftware

Create and administer a training programOverallDepartmental

The Teams

Recruit new employeesPrepare facilitiesCreate a training

programAdminister training

Managers / Recruiting Agency

ITHR / Technical PublicationsSMEs

Product Owner: Director of HR

How we did the work

Portal & process for reviewing resumesSchedule for interviewsStandard tests & interview questions

Recruiting New Employees

How we did the work

Corporate / industry overviewProduct overviewIT / Systems overviewAgile methodology / RallyRole-specific

Creating & administering a training program

How we did the work

WorkstationPhoneHardwareSoftwareNetwork access

Preparing Facilities

What we did wellRecruitment

19 new hires ready by the starting dateOnly 2 employees were not retained after the

90-day mark due to performanceCreating & administering training

Enthusiastic response from the new hiresNew hires came up-to-speed very quicklyReusable for future new hires

What we can do betterThe area hardest hit was IT:

Ability for new hires to access systems was sketchyComputers not available for new hires after the

orientation periodNo one considered impact of increased traffic on

servers and networkTeam Leads were not available to answer

questions due to meetings, etc.

What we can do betterSolution: New servers were ordered after the

first wave of new hires; however it took 6 weeks to get them in place

No one considered impact of increased traffic on servers and network

Solution: New servers were ordered after the first wave of new hires