Project on/off-boarding - Home Office User-Centred Design ManualProfessional standards and guidance

Project on-boarding and off-boarding

Onboarding to a new project

When you welcome a new design colleague into your team, point them to this UCD onboarding list to help them settle in.

Designer checklist

  • complete the new starter access form to get access to relevant tools
  • run through the UCD induction Trello board (if new to the Home Office – you can get access to this by completing the new starter access form)
  • complete the mandatory UCD induction training
  • learn about working patterns of the team (agile ceremonies, ways of working) 
  • find out about team roadmap and project priorities  
  • book 121s with your manager
  • join team Trello boards  
  • get access to team Slack channels and the wider UCD community Slack channels 
  • get edit access to existing files from team
  • share any design assets created (for instance in Figma, Heroku) with your team

New portfolio checklist

If your colleague isn’t new to the Home Office but has come from a different portfolio, the portfolio lead or line manager should provide the following, if available:

  • portfolio induction 
  • portfolio org chart  
  • overview of all services within portfolio and key projects happening 
  • guidance on specialist terminology / acronyms used in project and portfolio 
  • guidance on where and how to document things
  • invite designer to portfolio-wide show and tells, town hall meetings, etc 
  • introduce designer to immediate colleagues and team 
  • pair designer with an informal buddy from the same profession 
  • arrange mentoring, where appropriate

Offboarding from a project

If an employee is leaving the Home Office altogether, their line manager will need to arrange a session with security to formally offboard them.

Portfolio lead or line manager checklist

Managers must: 

  • remove designer from all delivery team boards 
  • remove from private team Slack groups and channels 
  • remove from Confluence / Heroku / Mural / and any project-specific SharePoint groups / folders  
  • let the UCD Operations team know that we can update our records, remove them from our mailing list and, if relevant, remove them from any general Slack and SharePoint groups and release their Sketch account

Designer checklist

Designers must:

  • transfer ownership of any design assets to your colleagues in your team
  • transfer edit access to any new designer joining the team
  • transfer any GitHub repos to team members or team account that’s held on UKHomeOffice
  • store Sketch and offline assets in authorised shared design areas - check with line manager or portfolio lead
  • if relevant, include screenshots of the service at the time of review. Without screenshots, it can be very difficult later on to work out what was there  
  • keep a list of additional functionality or design ideas to explore further 
  • save everything in one place, and make sure they refer to it with their handover notes
  • put together a map of the end-to-end journey, if possible. They’re great for quickly getting a bird’s-eye view of a service

Read more about why you should keep records of service decisions.

If you have any questions or need any help, email UCD Operations.