"Where Do I Start Reading?" A Practical Guide to Getting Up to Speed with Code and Culture — Onboarding Strategies to Empower New Team Members

“When you join a new Android team, the first question is often, ‘Where should I start reading the code?’” Many newcomers face this problem. Meanwhile, teams without a clear onboarding process or up-to-date documentation see slower ramp-ups and heavier burdens on existing members with “catching up through OJTs”. The diversification of tech stacks (e.g., View and Compose coexisting) and growing project size make onboarding even harder. This session explains effective onboarding strategies and pragmatic methods for documentation and knowledge sharing so Android teams can help new members contribute quickly and confidently. We’ll show how to create an environment where newcomers know exactly “where to begin,” learn proactively, and boost both team productivity and engagement, illustrated with real-world experiments and success stories. Session topics include: - How to dissect large, legacy codebases (Where to start reading, how to grasp the big picture, and how to use debugging and static-analysis tools to understand code.) - Understanding project-specific technology and architecture (Comprehending key patterns such as MVVM and Clean Architecture, dependency injection, multi-module setups, and practical distinctions of concepts like ViewModel and Context.) - Catching up on surrounding knowledge needed for development (Overview of specialized areas such as test code, obfuscation, security, and performance measurement.) - What makes “minimum viable” documentation (Architecture overview, build steps, debugging methods, FAQs, key-feature explanations—items newcomers should consult first.) - How to keep documentation from going stale (Embedding updates into the development process: who updates, when, and how.) (Translated by the DroidKaigi Committee)

• 

  richako (risako070310) Android Engineer