Mentor

We held a three-day pilot patterns training. Everyone in the class thought there was too much material. One suggestion in the evaluations was the need for some help in the actual use of the patterns. So we expanded the three days to a full week. Monday had all-day training while Tuesday through Friday had both a half-day of training and a half-day of mentoring. During the half-days of mentoring, we provided consulting on real projects. The new schedule made a tremendous difference in the effectiveness of the training.

When a project wants to get started with the new idea, have someone around who understands it and can help the team.

You are a Dedicated Champion(129) trying to introduce a new idea into your organization. A project is interested in the innovation but some/all of the team members are unfamiliar with it.

People want to use the new idea on their project but don’t know how to begin.

If team members are willing to introduce the new idea into their project, they can study it on their own to some extent. However, they probably need help to apply it effectively. The team is likely to make more progress if it has access to an expert who can guide them through their problems. Mentors can prevent small mistakes from growing into huge delays.

Beginners need to understand what experts do. Apprenticeship learning is ideal because it gives beginners access to an expert’s “cognitive library.” This is better than any help system or documentation.

Therefore:

Find an outside or internal consultant or trainer to provide mentoring and feedback while project members are getting started with the innovation.

Encourage the Mentor to use a hands-on approach, work side-by-side with the team members, and let them know that he has struggled with the same problems. This will help open learners’ minds to the innovation. The Mentor should use Just Enough(180) to introduce complicated topics and use Personal Touch(198) to help each team member understand how the innovation can be useful.

Carefully check the credentials of a potential Mentor. Don’t simply trust what anyone claims to be able to do. Ideally, the Mentor should have experience in using the innovation and should know something about the team’s problem domain. In addition, look for a Mentor whose personality will mesh with the team culture, although it may be impossible to find one person who everyone will like and relate to. If the Mentor alienates some team members and turns them off from using the innovation, you may need to bring in Mentors with different personality types for these people.

Make certain you are clear about what the Mentor should do. Clearly state why you are hiring him and define the deliverables. Ask the Mentor to help outline specific goals for the educational experience the team members will have.

Don’t allow a team to become dependent on the Mentor. Otherwise, they may not want to let him go or will call on him for every little thing. Ask the Mentor when and how he plans to leave his role. The best Mentors strive to work themselves out of a job. You may need to set a time when the Mentor will be available and then, at some point, encourage team members to move forward on their own.

The organization may wish to use a Mentor to train an entire team to prepare for a project, as described in Don Olson’s pattern Train Hard, Fight Easy. The benefit lies in the shared experience of training together, which not only enables the team to communicate effectively about the innovation but also serves as a team-building exercise.

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This pattern produces a better understanding of the innovation while people are starting to use it. Users will have an easier time because they will have an experienced person to get them over the hurdles. This helps to create a good impression of the innovation and increases the likelihood that people will be willing to continue to use it.

A Mentor is not always easy to find. The number of experts is usually small compared with the number of projects, especially in the early days of an innovation’s appearance. Look for Mentors among the Innovators(170) and help teams grow their own expertise so that this mentoring activity continues with internal support.

Pattern guru Jim Coplien says that “the use of pattern mentors in an organization can speed the acceptance of patterns and can help provide a balance between encouraging good design practices and discouraging overly high expectations of designs based on patterns. Initially mentors can help developers recognize the patterns that they already use in their application domain and show how they could be reused in subsequent projects. Mentors should also ensure that the wrong patterns are not applied to a problem (i.e., people tend to reuse things that they know and the same temptation will apply to patterns, regardless of whether the pattern actually fits the problem).”^[*]

Cathryn worked for a large defense subcontractor back in the early 1980s. They were learning Ada and object-based design from a small consulting group. The owner of the consulting firm had hired people who used very different approaches. She thought it was just a curiosity at the time, but now she sees that this consultant-owner was very wise. He knew that different people learn differently and what would work with one person might not work with another. His team included Gary the Nice (everyone liked Gary, but as she looks back on it, she thinks if he had been the only mentor he wouldn’t have been as effective; as it was he balanced out the others); Ed the Barbarian (Ed was the owner and knew a lot but he could be a little over-the-top for some); Johan the Master (he also knew a lot but he was more subtle and more laid back, a “slow reveal”); and Brad (just Brad, a plain spoken, good guy to work with). This way, everyone could find someone they felt comfortable with and the mix provided the best way to learn the new approaches. They each brought their own take on the material to the table.