Onboarding Bot for Newcomers to Software Engineering

Abstract

Software development teams dedicate considerable resources to training newcomers. Newcomers are new developers to a software project. The software onboarding process is more complicated than onboarding into other organizations. It is much more challenging and time-consuming. The role of a mentor in onboarding newcomers in software engineering is well understood. However, the disruptions to the work of an experienced developer can reduce the quality of their work and job satisfaction. We propose a conversational bot that can help onboard newcomers to a software project instead of an experienced programmer. The bot will act as a mentor for the newcomer, thus putting less stress on experienced programmers. The bot will also be able to scan outside sources, such as stack overflow, for solutions to issues a newcomer may face. The newcomer will be able to interact with the bot using natural language. We will use this bot to assess improvements to code quality in future studies.