20 Essential Questions to Ask When Joining a New Software Team

Different software development teams have distinct working styles, and many variables can cause friction even within the same company. As a software engineer, joining a new team is exciting, but you should consider a series of questions.

Technical Aspects

1. How do you build the software locally?

This is the first thing you need to know, as building is the initial step in developing and running software.

2. How do you test the software locally?

While CI pipelines catch test failures, you must be able to run tests on your machine to shorten the development cycle, perform regression testing, and not rely solely on CI as the first gate.

3. How is the development environment set up?

Understand which tools need to be installed on your machine to become an efficient team member; solving 95% of requirements up front saves time later.

4. Where is the source code?

Most projects have a code repository; you need to know where it is stored and how to fetch it locally.

5. Where is the CI/CD pipeline and how does it work?

Identify the CI/CD pipeline, understand its steps, and review recent runs to grasp the workflow.

6. Where are the product backlog items?

Know the current state of the software and the upcoming features that need priority.

7. How are tests run in pre‑production and production?

Find out if there are integration environments, canary deployments, or chaos testing, and how the team ensures production standards.

8. Is on‑call duty required?

Determine whether the software requires 24/7 availability, the on‑call rotation, notification mechanisms, and expectations outside regular hours.

9. Where is the internal documentation?

Locate the team's internal docs, understand their organization, and verify they are up to date.

Collaboration

10. Who is on the team and what are their responsibilities?

Identify each engineer’s role; often a few engineers share sub‑project ownership, and daily stand‑ups reveal who does what.

11. What regular meetings does the team hold?

Find out the cadence of stand‑ups, weekly syncs, or other recurring meetings.

12. Who should I ask when I have "new‑bie" questions?

Usually a mentor or "buddy" is assigned to help newcomers with basic queries, regardless of seniority.

13. Who decides on new features?

Determine whether a product manager, architect, or other stakeholder owns feature decisions and try to meet with them to learn the roadmap.

14. What are the main communication channels?

Identify whether the team uses Slack, Teams, email, or other tools for discussions and ensure you join them.

External Factors

15. How is customer feedback collected?

Know if the product is open‑source on GitHub, whether feedback comes via issues, sales, or support teams.

16. What support agreements exist with customers?

Understand any SLAs or contractual obligations you must honor.

17. Where are the public/customer documents?

Locate the external documentation, ensure it stays accurate and up‑to‑date, and know who is responsible for it.

Product

18. What high‑level pain points does the software have?

Identify architectural issues, security vulnerabilities, or recurring customer problems.

19. What are the stakeholders focused on?

Find out which core individuals or teams influence short‑term and long‑term roadmaps.

20. What is the software release cadence?

Learn whether the team practices continuous deployment, daily releases, or has a bi‑annual schedule.

Conclusion

For most software engineers, joining a new team and tackling new technology is exciting. Use this time to learn quickly; these questions should help you integrate smoothly.