Mentoring Circles
Mentoring Circles are targeted at those wanting to increase their knowledge of the Scrum framework. These are not intended to replace Certified Scrum Training, but may serve as a good way to continue your education after the training.
Ideal candidates are:
- New to Scrum
- Interested in learning more about Scrum
- Familiar with at least basic Scrum terminology (e.g. Sprint Planning)
- Keen to join coaching circles in the future, but not ready to facilitate sessions themselves
- Using Scrum but not seeing results, or lacking understanding of the reasoning behind the meetings, roles and artefacts.
The goals of mentoring circles are:
- To learn about common techniques and how they are used in Scrum
- To learn about common problems and misunderstandings of the Scrum framework
- To learn about the values and principles on which Scrum is based
- To learn how to follow the spirit of Scrum and keep aligned with the core values and principles even if you have challenges adopting Scrum
- To equip you with knowledge to explain why things are done in Scrum, rather than just how they are done.
The format of mentoring circles are:
- A group of 4 to 6 people meet weekly with an experienced Scrum practitioner (with 3 or more years of experience)
- Sessions are 90 minutes and are arranged at a time and venue suitable for all people (usually evenings)
- Circles run for 6 to 8 weeks in total, and participants are asked to commit to attending all sessions
- An agenda of topics agreed by the group are covered in the sessions, some suggested topics are listed below
Suggested topics for mentoring circles are:
- Scrum Artefacts: Backlogs and Burndowns
- Scrum Meetings: Planning, Reviews, Retrospectives, Daily Scrum, Backlog Grooming
- Scrum Roles: Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Team Members
- Resistance to adopting Scrum
- Dealing with organisational change
- Understanding facilitation skills
- Engineering practises and their place in Scrum
- Release Planning with Scrum
Mentoring circles are a new idea spawned out of the recent Coaching Circles retrospective as a need was identified to cater for an entry level circle were the focus was more on learning than sharing experience. We hope to kick off the first mentoring circles as soon as we have sufficient interest.
If you are interested in joining a mentoring circle, please email info [at] scrum <dot> org <dot> za.
We are also still discussing if mentoring circles will follow a paid model where circle participants pay the facilitator per session that they attend or a once off cost for the series. The cost is likely to be affordable by most individuals. We hope that this will make offering to facilitate attractive to very experienced practitioners. If you have thoughts on this either as a potential attendee or facilitator please email us or post a comment.
