Songkick's Ability: Mentorship

– Mentoring
– Coaching
– Identifying areas of improvement and progression

Pairs effectively with other developers or testers in the team.

Example behaviours:

– Paired with a developer on a skweb feature
– Paired with a developer or tester to test model, or test, a Skweb feature

Supports and mentors peers in an ad-hoc way.

Able to formally mentor new hires.

Able to deliver constructive, actionable feedback in an empathetic way.

Example behaviours:

– Acted as a mentor buddy for a new hire
– Helped a developer understand how a Songkic service works
– Suggested improvements empathetically during a code review
– Shared a blog post with a colleague to help them with a problem
– Identified when it would be more valuable for someone else to pick up a task (e.g. for educational purposes) instead of doing it themselves

Example behaviours for testers:

• Helped a tester or developer test push notifications
• Explained a testing tool or technique to a developer or tester
• Suggested improvements to a test model or testing approach
• Run a bug bash or interactive testing session

Actively coaches / mentors more junior members of the team, identifying areas for focus and improvement.

Actively works to share information with the team, e.g. best practices, technical approaches (avoiding silos).

Uses coaching techniques to help developers arrive at answers to their questions / problems.

Example behaviours:

– Prepared and delivered a presentation on best practices (i.e. Git, testing, etc)
– Attended a conference or workshop and then delivered that training to the team.
– Introduced a short presentation on Ruby best practices as part of onboarding
– Did a workshop on how Tourbox-service works
– Worked with a developer to organise a mob programming session to remove an information silo

Mentors groups of peers, as well as potentially coaching senior technologists in the team (e.g. Architects and Technical Leads).

Actively mentors developers, identifying areas for focus and improvement.

Uses coaching techniques to help developers and/or testers arrive at answers to their questions/problems.

Guides developers in their product team.

If you have direct reports: Coaches and helps grow direct reports, identifies areas for their progression.

Example behaviours:

– Did a workshop on how Tourbox-service works
– Worked with a developer to organise a mob programming session to remove an information silo
– Coached a developer to prepare and deliver a dev talk
– Worked with a report to set their personal development goals for the quarter
– Identified an opportunity for a team member to be mentored by another team member and worked with them to make it happen

Example behaviours for testers:

– Did a workshop on exploratory testing
– Delivered a presentation on bug best practices
– Onboarded new starters to testing

Creates ways for people to mentor each other.

Develops new coaches and mentors in the team.

Guides developers across product teams, supporting development of their technical and product skills.

Example behaviours:

– Delivered a coaching workshop
– Introduced brownbag talks and lined up speakers