Mentorship

Tools and Techniques

Who are we?

Andrea Soper - ZenDoodles

Cathy Theys - YesCT

Who are you?

If you are curious about how people be come mentors, or you are going to mentor today, then this talk is for you. If that doesn't sound like the right fit for you, you can pick another session.

Advance Planning

Talk about global sprint weekend.

• announce opportunities to participate, tweets, gratuitous irc factoid use
• repeat announcements
• hold local events, repeatedly
• blog about the benefits
• get other high profile people to recommend and remind about opportunities to participate in mentoring, slides for presenters at events, talking to active contributors about the benefits of sending people to mentoring

Needs

1 mentor for every 4 expected participants (explain what we used to think and why we think this now, eg people (mentors and participants) come and go throughout the day), and new mentors cannot handle as much as experienced mentors

Get Ready

issue queue

Review tasks in advance so you’re familiar with some.

novice tag

• on issues with novice tasks. (issues are hardly ever entirely novice)
• dreditor
• insert novice tasks button (adds links to contributor task documents for you)
• to update the issue summary remaining tasks section
• add tags for needs things identified in the remaining tasks, like needs screenshots needs tests not each remaining task is novice
• what are good novice tasks https://drupal.org/core-mentoring/novice-tasks
• when adding or removing the novice tag on tasks in the summary, or on the issue in general it can help to link to the novice-tasks documentation page so that the general community can discover the guidelines for what is a novice task
• for the number of people you expect at the sprint, identify about ⅓ that many issues with novice tasks not everyone will work on a separate issue, multiple people should work together… more on that in the section about matching people with tasks
• communicate priorities

Mentoring

• make sure people feel welcome
• match tasks to participants, ensure they are successful the first time have people work together on issues. (Sprints) 10 people working on 10 different issues is not very effective. much of the work will stay unreviewed for a long time. have 10 people work on 3 issues, in groups, getting the issue moving much closer to rtbc.
• keep people engaged even when they struggle
• help without being overbearing
• enable folks to continue afterward on their own
• say hi in irc
• show task types (contributor tasks/task cards)
• when mentors are asked questions, say dont know
• show in public how to find the answer, introduce people who do know the answer
• get them to hit save, post half working work
• get feedback from others (save on the issue, paste link into irc, people are all over the world not just in the room)
• at in person events, have groups show an experienced mentor what they have been working on after a few hours. (So they can get their sticker!)
• how to give constructive feedback
• review (core gates aka doesn't need to be perfect)
• if experienced mentor identifies a small change needed, have someone in the group mentor someone in the room who is not working on anything. bring the whole (bigger) group back up when they are done to get another look from the experienced mentor.
• keep in mind overall goal is to enable and inspire people to contribute *again*. give them the tools, the confidence, and help them have success so they have the desire

Follow-up

no followup no one ever does it.

Lessons Learned

• Buddies/Mentors in organizations.
• Objectives buddy is culture/assimilation. Buddy is a long-term relationship. Where is the coffee? Who do I ask xyz?
• Mentor or team is more like mentored sprints. Group meetings? Office hours? Team code review
• Remove barriers to progress
• How do you protect your all-stars from being inundated with mentee questions?
• Office hours
• Get mentees to help each other
• How do you deal with a toxic contributor? Publicly

Questions?