Guideline: Plan the Mentoring Schedule
This guideline describes how to determine the mentoring schedule for a project.
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An effective approach to scheduling workshops is to work within the context of the project lifecycle.

Hold a workshop early in the project to create the overall project plan, the initial iteration plan, and other plans within the associated discipline of the process or tool improvements (e.g.  the requirements management or change management plans). Define your iteration plans to introduce just enough process or tool capabilities to meet the iteration's objectives. That way, the project team can learn the process by applying it.

At the transition point between iterations, hold another workshop to review iteration results, plan the next iteration, and identify issues and action plans. Include mid-project adjustments to the process of the project. You can adjust to the pace of process adoption.

Hold follow-on mentoring workshops to help team members develop the skills they need to execute the iteration plan. For example, during the Inception phase, project teams will need to understand the problem and create a vision for the solution. A workshop led by an experienced facilitator/mentor is the most effective way to make progress on this front.

During the iterations, mentors should work with the team to guide them in new process activities identified in the iteration plans, which result in the creation of artifacts. Mentors can help team members learn how to play their roles in the process and perform tasks in the tools with increasing proficiency as the project progresses. This approach is called experiential learning (or learning by doing). If you think of software development as a kind of team sport, then the mentor is a team coach who helps players achieve better results.

The mentoring sessions generally need to continue from Inception to Elaboration. For a project team of 10 people, 6-8 hours of mentoring/week may be sufficient.Plan for 12-15 days of mentoring over 12-15 weeks (from Inception to Elaboration). The effort estimate will vary based on current state, future state, and time available to get to the future state.