Senior mentor "teams" Trial

Updated proposal

Senior Mentor Teams

I propose we trial this in AMER with 2 Senior mentor teams consisting of 3 ICs each for 3 weeks. At the end of the three weeks, we gather feedback via an anonymous survey and summarize findings on an issue.

Role of the Senior Mentor

  1. Act as a point of contact for ICs when it comes to questions with tickets, documentation updates, bug fixes, "who to talk to" questions, advanced troubleshooting, etc.
  2. Prioritize pairings with their team when requested.
  3. Keep an eye on the queues for tickets that would be good for their teams to take on (with their guidance when needed) or that would be good to pair on with their team.
    1. When a ticket is identified, the Senior will reach out to their team and see if any are interested in picking it up or pairing on it.
    2. The Senior mentor will work with IC or team on completing documentation updates or MRs that come out of the ticket.
  4. The Senior mentor should offer the opportunity for ICs to watch them troubleshoot and work tickets to gain a better understanding of how they work. Tickets that fall under the Senior's area of expertise would be good candidates here.

Role of IC

  1. Ask questions and bring tickets to your Senior mentor.
  2. Set up additional pairings with your Senior mentor.
  3. Join the office hour/ crush session if you are able.
  4. Do not be afraid to tackle tickets outside of your comfort zone. (Remember that your Senior mentor is there to help!)
  5. Use this as an opportunity to walk through GitLab features or processes that you may not be familiar with and would like some additional guidance on.

Process

  1. The Senior mentor will set up a once-a-week office hour/ pairing session and invite their team. The team can bring any questions or tickets that they are working on. If there are none, the Senior mentor will then move onto tickets that they identified as good for the team to handle. Once those are answered, the team can start working through the queues.
  2. The Senior mentor will set up a pairing with each IC each week. The first pairing could be a good icebreaker to get the Senior mentor and the IC acquainted.
  3. The ICs are encouraged to schedule more pairing sessions with the Senior mentor. These pairing sessions do not need to solely focus on tickets. They can focus on documentation updates, bug fixes, advanced troubleshooting, specific tasks such as upgrades, etc.
  4. For all pairings and office hours/ crush sessions, an issue is created using a Senior Mentor Team template that links to the Senior Mentor Teams epic for tracking in the Support Pairing project. Document any tickets, issues, MRs, as well as any other efforts or topics discussed.
  5. Collect feedback through an anonymous survey and summarize the findings on an issue.

Original thoughts. See updated proposal above.

I am proposing that we test out Senior Support Engineers having a "team" of Support Engineers to help mentor. The teams could periodically rotate through Seniors to get a chance to work with different people across their region.

The goal would be for the Senior to act as a mentor to the other Support Engineers. It would give everyone a small room to ask for assistance or to set up pairings. I can also see a possibility for the Senior to encourage Support Engineers from their team to take ownership of new tickets that the Senior comes across. I suspect this will be most useful for newer Support Engineers, however, I would still encourage those that have been here for a while to opt-in in the spirit of collaboration.

This may also help increase the attendance at the Senior office hours. I also see this as a nice way to help new Support Engineers to ramp up after onboarding.

I am envisioning this as an iteration of the Senior Trial.

Upon discussing with @jcolyer and @izzyfee during our 1:1, the idea came up that this could also help with determining hiring goals and budget by determining a good Senior Support Engineer to Support Engineer ratio. In addition, it could act as a way for Seniors to trial some aspects of management.

I propose we target this trial in AMER next quarter or the first quarter after the conclusion of some of the current trials (Senior Trial, Support Response Crew, Ticket Management).

I am struggling with the best way to measure success. What is a measurable metric we can track?

Edited by Aric Buerer