3.4 Mentoring Session
Last updated on 2026-03-05 | Edit this page
Overview
Questions
- Why is mentoring useful?
- Who leads a mentorship?
- How is mentorship typically structured?
- What are the responsibilities of the mentor and mentee during a mentorship?
- How can we improve how we function as a team?
Objectives
- List the benefits of mentoring
- Describe how a mentoring relationship typically operates
- Identify your current strengths and weaknesses as a team
- Decide what your team wants from a mentoring session
- Receive suggestions from mentor about how to improve how you work as a team
- Refine ways of working and update project backlog based on suggestions
Mentorship within Scrum
As we’ve seen already, good team communication within a project is an indicator of project success. But beyond simple communication, successful projects also create positive environments of knowledge exchange and learning. This might be accomplished through a number of means, for example:
- Collaborative - with team members learning informally through their day-to-day interactions with other members
- Training - where team members attend courses to upskill themselves in an area
- Mentorship - where team members are supported to upskill themselves leveraging the expertise and experience of others within the team. This might be through a traditional senior/junior mentorship, or within peer-to-peer relationships within the team
Conceptually, mentoring is generally well aligned with the Scrum philosophy, with the Scrum pillars of inspection and adaptation advocating for the identification of issues and continuous improvement, albeit within the context of personal skills development. Scum Masters already adopt the role of mentor with regard to Scrum itself, but general mentoring simply extends this to other members of the team and other topics. Within a Scrum environment, this is referred to as taking a mentorship “stance”, where mentorship is typically seen as ad hoc as opposed to a formal mentorship arrangement.
Typical examples are:
- A single member with particular prior experience with a technology guiding another team member or members
- A particular member has prior experience with achieving a desired outcome, perhaps in enacting a particular process or approach unfamiliar to another
- A new member is mentored by an established team member in an area, or as part of a general onboarding process
- A particular member wants to be mentored in other Scrum roles, e.g. Product Owner or Scrum Master
How Does Mentorship Work?
In a general peer arrangement, mentorship is driven by the individual requesting it. Such requests may be around asking for guidance to improve some identified area in how they work, or maybe they want to learn a new skill, but don’t know where to start. Or, it could be they are facing challenges in their work - which may be technical, collaborative, or anything - and they would appreciate a fresh perspective.
Mentorship is thereby driven by the individual themselves, in terms of:
- Direction and duration - the goals to set along the way, and how long the mentorship should last
- Level of formality - for example, regular chats, or formal/performance oriented
- Frequency and regularity of meetings
- Confidentiality level - default is confidential, but perhaps others may be involved along the way
Critically, the ultimate aim of mentorship is to provide support and guidance, but not to assess.
A mentor’s role is to support the mentee’s development by providing guidance, perspective, and encouragement while fostering independence and confidence. This includes helping the mentee clarify their goals, offering constructive feedback on their work and decisions, and sharing relevant experience to help them navigate challenges and opportunities. A mentor also creates a safe and trusting environment where the mentee can ask questions, reflect openly, and learn from mistakes. Importantly, a mentor does not direct or control the mentee’s path, but instead helps the mentee build skills, make informed choices, and develop their own professional identity over time.
Benefits of Mentorship
As such, whilst working towards goals identified by the individual, it becomes a safe place to air concerns, to take advantage of others’ experience, and to identify and develop opportunities for growth. It also offers a reflective, strategic perspective, providing space to think about how you work and what you want to change, without having to consider the details. In turn, it can lead to a mindset of self-reflection and improvement that you can take forward beyond the mentorship. Finally, when the mentorship has run its course, you decide when it ends.
Solo Exercise: How Could Mentoring Help Me?
3 mins.
Assume for a moment that you have an opportunity to obtain a mentorship for yourself with a more experienced colleague, outside of this workshop.
Consider what you’d like to personally learn more about or improve how you do things. This could be from your experiences so far within this workshop, or perhaps something you’ve already acknowledged in your day-to-day working you’d like to improve. List 5 things you’d like to work on.
A Typical Mentorship
For an Individual
How it looks in practice is up to the mentee and the mentor, but typically, mentorship tends towards a common pattern.
When meeting with the mentor:
- At a high level, decide what you want to achieve early (which may change), e.g. career development, technical skills, leadership, etc.
- Set some rough goals over time to reach the desired achievements (which also may change), e.g. learn how to use a particular technology, put a new approach into practice, lead a small project
- Clarify roles and responsibilities of mentor and mentee, so it’s clear who is expected to do what before each meeting
- When to meet in terms of meeting length and frequency
- Occasionally, reflect on how it’s going and potentially re-orient or “sunset” the mentorship
When outside of mentoring sessions, the mentee:
- Works towards implementing changes and working towards goals when time and available effort allows
- Thinks about whether mentorship direction or goals need to change to be more useful
For a Team
When the mentee is a team and the mentor is a more experienced Research Software Engineer (RSE) (as it will be in this session), the mentorship typically focuses on improving the team’s technical practices, processes, adherence to Scrum, and long-term sustainability, rather than supporting a single individual.
Group Exercise: How Can Mentoring Help your Team?
10 mins.
In your groups:
- (5 mins) Based on your findings from the Sprint 1 Retrospective activity, indentify and list (as concise bullet points) your key strengths and weaknesses as a team, and then prioritise those weaknesses based on their impact on your work (i.e. prioritise those you would most appreciate help with)
- (5 mins) Create a list of discussion points and questions for your mentor to help focus the conversation on identifying solutions to address your weaknesses
Group Exercise: Mentoring Session
25 mins.
Discuss your identified weaknesses with your mentor, using the list of discussion points and questions to help drive the conversation. The goal of the meeting should be to identify and decide on a set of at least three clear and specific goals for improvement as a team to address your weaknesses.
The mentor will already be aware of the project and its goals, and within this single meeting their task will be to help you improve as a team - so see it as an opportunity to leverage their experience and explore ways to do even better!
Group Exercise: Plan to Address your Weaknesses
15 mins.
Discuss and decide on how to integrate your improvement goals into how you will approach your next sprint. Refine your product backlog as needed (e.g. reprioritising items, or other such changes) to reflect this.
- A mentee (a team in this case) develops and drives the goals of the mentorship
- A mentor provides structure, guidance, and advice to assist the mentee to achieve their goals
- Prior to beginning a mentorship, work to identify the areas in your work (or team) that you wish to improve or learn more about
- Work with a mentor to develop achievable goals that you (or team) will work towards