Task: Provide Method Adoption Support
Mentor a project team in the execution of a new process, including all elements of planning, coordination, configuration, tailoring, and training as necessary to ensure effective adoption. Help the team learn and apply the process in the context of real project work.

Disciplines: Software Capability Improvement
Purpose

Mentoring accelerates adoption of software development capabilities by a project team. Mentors play a catalytic role in making change successful. People will accept change if they feel confident of the outcome. Good mentors not only transfer skills but also instill confidence.

Relationships
RolesPrimary Performer: Additional Performers:
InputsMandatory:
    Optional:
    • None
    Outputs
      Main Description

      The most effective method for introducing change is to tie improvement efforts directly to the work being performed. Use project and iteration planning to drive the introduction of new processes, just ahead of when they should be applied. Jump-start changes and facilitate skills transfer through a series of focused workshops followed by hands-on mentoring.

      Guide and advise the project team so that they can apply process appropriately:

      • Lead workshops, create usage models, and review artifacts.
      • Help the project manager create and execute plans and manage issues and risks.

      Introduce the "right" amount of process so as to not to slow down the project's progress:

      • Follow "minimal but sufficient principle."
      • Mentoring is about "leading change."
      • The goal is to make progress in the project, not tool or process ceremony.
      • Mentoring is not about theoretical discussion of the features of the process.
      • Mentoring is not about religious battles between different usage models.

      A key part of the mentoring effort is providing feedback and lessons learned in order to improve the process.

      Steps
      Conduct mentoring kick-off workshop

      During the kick-off session the project team and mentor discuss and determine:

      • mentoring objectives for the project team
      • roles
      • training that the project teams need

      In this workshop the mentor learns the context and background of the project.

      Create deployment and action plan for the project

      Create a simple plan of process deployment and adoption activities for the project. This plan should take the team's project plan into consideration. A key objective is that the deployment and adoption activities should have minimal to no negative impact to the project. The scope of mentoring may vary depending on the enterprise process adoption schedule, the specific project and project team. 

      Assess the current state of capability of the project team (their strengths and weaknesses) in various disciplines and then determine where to focus first.

      Process adoption must take place in an iterative, incremental and evolutionary manner. Plan mentoring activities and deployment of the process with this in mind.

      Provide training sessions in the process areas
      Conduct training sessions to introduce the team to key concepts of the processes. This is only a precursor, not a replacement, for the learning that takes place through execution on the project.
      Conduct mentoring sessions
      • Conduct regular mentoring sessions with the team. There must be at least one session per week (on-site or remote).
      • Create a clear agenda for each session. Only the relevant roles (e.g. Project Manager, Analyst, Designer) will attend.
      • Check what tasks have been completed since the last mentoring sessions. Check the status of issues, risks and defects. Check what tasks/activities need to be completed this week.
      • Discuss and point to concepts, guidelines, and examples.  Artifact examples are always very helpful for project teams.
      • At the end of each mentoring session, review the task list that needs to be completed by the project team by the next mentoring session.

      For guidance on how to plan and schedule for mentoring sessions see Guideline: Plan the Mentoring Schedule.


      Review the artifacts created by the project team using the process
      As a project progresses,  document the process the team applied during each iteration. This enables the organization to collect experiences across projects. It also enables teams to not only apply process changes in subsequent iterations of current projects, but also to use them as the basis for new projects. This results in a process that is grounded in practical experience and can grow to support the organization's specific needs. Instead of being a theoretical exercise, process definition emerges from the experience of solving problems and delivering results.
      Identify potential new mentors
      Identify team members who are good candidates to mentor other teams based on what they learned executing the process on this project.
      Collect measurements and lessons learned

      Provide feedback about the team's adoption of the process. These lessons learned provide critical feedback that enables continuous improvement of the process. Examples of helpful feedback to collect throughout the mentoring project include:

      • incompatibilities between the process and tool capabilities
      • impact of process to the project (positive and negative impacts)

      Collect the following feedback from the project team:

      • effectiveness of the process
      • effectiveness of training sessions
      • effectiveness of mentoring sessions
      Regularly check the project after exiting
      Confirm continued self-sufficiency, answer questions and provide advice.
      Key Considerations
      • Mentoring is successful if the project team shows improved project performance (e.g. iterations on time, on budget, fewer issues, fewer risks, lower defect rate)
      • A good mentor must be able to adjust the Mentoring Action Plan "on the fly" based on the needs of the project.
      • A project team may need multiple mentors in different areas
      • The mentoring relationship must be terminated if the project team is not making desired progress. The Center of Capability must investigate and determine the root cause. Either the mentor or the project team (or a specific role) or a broken process could be primarily responsible for the failure.
      More Information