“First checks” are the best onboarding doc you’ll ever write
Most onboarding pain isn’t “lack of docs.” It’s missing starting points in real workflows.
That shows up in:
- deploys
- on‑call triage
- migrations
- “why is this service slow?”
When you don’t know what’s safe to try first, the only sensible move is escalation.
The highest‑leverage onboarding artifact is a short list of first checks that removes that uncertainty.
First checks template (one screen)
Owner:
Escalation path:
Source links:
First checks (3–5):
Safe next step:
What first checks are (and aren’t)
First checks are:
- safe
- fast
- verifiable
They aren’t:
- deep investigations
- “read the whole system design”
- tribal knowledge hidden in a thread
They’re the on‑ramp into the workflow.
A simple first-checks template
For any repeat question, capture:
- What is this? (one sentence)
- Owner + escalation path
- Source links (runbook, dashboards, deploy history, repo paths)
- First checks (3–5 bullets)
- Safe next step (what’s low-risk to try first)
That’s it.
Example: “payments are timing out”
- Owner: Payments Platform (#payments-platform)
- Links: timeouts dashboard, deploy history, runbook
- First checks:
- last deploy and feature flags
- upstream latency vs downstream timeouts
- error rate trend on the critical endpoint
- queue backlog or retry storm signals
- Safe next step: follow the runbook’s “stabilize” path and verify impact
How to build them without a doc project
Don’t schedule a documentation sprint.
Do this instead:
- take the top 10 repeat questions in one workflow
- write first checks for each
- assign an owner to keep each entry current
- keep the answer close to where the question happens (chat, runbook, service docs)
When first checks are easy to find, onboarding gets calmer fast because fewer people get stuck at step zero.