Training and Onboarding initiatives in High Energy Physics experiments

TL;DR

This paper reviews current training and onboarding practices in major High Energy Physics experiments to identify key considerations for efficient integration of new members amidst increasing software complexity.

Contribution

It documents and analyzes onboarding initiatives across several HEP experiments, providing insights for future improvements in collaboration integration.

Findings

Diverse onboarding strategies are employed across experiments.

Effective onboarding is crucial for managing complex software and large datasets.

Recommendations for future onboarding practices are proposed.

Abstract

In this paper we document the current analysis software training and onboarding activities in several High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments: ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, Belle II and DUNE. Fast and efficient onboarding of new collaboration members is increasingly important for HEP experiments as analyses and the related software become ever more complex with growing datasets. A meeting series was held by the HEP Software Foundation (HSF) in 2022 for experiments to showcase their initiatives. Here we document and analyse these in an attempt to determine a set of key considerations for future experiments.