New staffing

We're bringing on a new staff member and now the question is how to integrate him into the team. On traditional projects the MO I've seen is to have them read any documents (in whatever state they are in) and gradually assign them a functional section of the product. This has not been an optimal solution for a few reasons:

• The functional are "to be assigned" languishes during the hiring process
• Current staff is often unwilling to help the new dev become productive (or unaware of the fact a new dev is being added)
  
• If a functional area has not been earmarked, the new dev often does menial tasks (docs, exception handling) until the next version - often quitting before then

So does agility help this? It can.

1. The master backlog is filled with encapsulated and bite-sized tasks that are already identified and constrained for development.
   
2. High priority items are always addressed first, you don't end up with functional blockage due to staffing issues - everyone is cross-functional to some degree.
   
3. A structure already exists to validate the work of a new team member (via the acceptance tests).
4. Development failure within a given story will be (somewhat) mitigated since coding tasks are organized into quasi-independent units
   

Basically, you are continually doing the organization required for bringing on someone who is of a different level than the other team members, so disruption to the team and project are minimized.