DATEV Nine-Nine | Police Academy: Lessons learned after one year of Mentoring
By: Matthias Alt, Stephan Bierwirth & Gerrit Riesch
Intro
To keep a good precinct running like a well-oiled machine it’s necessary to take best possible care of new recruits and make sure they can make use of their full potential and grow to become awesome detectives (or even captains) like Raymond Holt and the rest of the team. We had several juniors join us lately and we would love to share with you what we’ve learned from this experience as colleagues and mentors.
Clear Expectations — Rosa Diaz
Let’s start with a Rosa Diaz like no-nonsense attitude from the beginning about the importance of setting clear expectations, ensuring that new developers understand their roles and responsibilities. This is even more important the other way round. The expectations the juniors have and how they can get the most out of the relationship should be checked early and frequently. It’s all about inspecting and adapting in our experience, i.e. to always question whether you’re still on the right track and to reflect. This way we learned for example, that working on small tasks by themselves is necessary to complement ongoing mob sessions. Making your own mistakes has always been a great way to learn not to jump into the same pitfalls again as we all know — whether it’s programming or mentoring. ;) Therefore, we think it’s highly beneficial to be open and honest about what all team members expect from each other from the get-go and that leads us right away to our next part…
Psychological Safety — Terry Jeffords
The necessary foundation for any kind of productive learning environment is in our opinion to have mutual trust and openness. Psychological safety (a concept popularized by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson) is key. This concept plays a vital role in the integration and success of new junior team members. Edmondson’s research emphasizes the significance of creating an environment where individuals feel safe to take interpersonal risks, voice their opinions, and ask questions without the fear of negative consequences — all important factors for a successful learning environment.
Just like Terry provides guidance and support to his colleagues, mentors can adopt a supportive teaching style that nurtures new junior team members. By offering mentorship, encouragement, and assistance, leaders can help junior members navigate challenges and thrive in their roles. Terry values open communication and encourages honest dialogue among team members. Similarly, fostering a culture of open communication within the team can empower new junior members to voice their opinions, ask questions, and contribute their ideas without hesitation. Like how Terry Jeffords motivates and supports his team, providing new developers with the necessary resources and training is key to their success. Whether it’s access to documentation, tools, or training materials, a supportive environment sets the stage for growth and collaboration.
By embracing the Terry-approach, teams can create a nurturing, supportive, and inclusive environment for new junior members to integrate seamlessly, grow professionally, and contribute effectively to the team’s success.
Ask “dumb” Questions — Jake Peralta
There are no dumb questions as we all know. And just like Jake who is always questioning the way things are done in the precinct it’s important to encourage recruits to think twice about processes, solutions etc. This can be on a more general level like questioning the sense behind a meeting or the way reviews are held but also on a smaller level like during a code review or when a more senior member shows some piece of code. Of course, having a project that doesn’t have an extremely tight deadline is very helpful here to really take the time to answer questions in the necessary level of detail. The mentoring process shouldn’t be only about getting work done as soon as possible but also about providing the best environment to learn — even if this causes some features to take more time to finish. The payoff in the end will be far greater if you invest time now and build a strong foundation for the team and the software developing future of the recruit. Also asking questions about how and why something was done in a certain way will force the junior member to really think about the code they wrote and to reflect on their solution.
Intrinsic Motivation — Amy Santiago
One factor that will be the all-deciding power behind the success or failure of this process is the intrinsic motivation of the recruits to get a hold (or — if you will — “Holt”) of the software developing world. It’s the Amy Santiago effect — a term we just coined to describe extremely motivated recruits who want to learn every little detail and plow through the learning process with pure force. With this kind of motivation, the Amys of the team catch up very quickly and deliver real value right away just as they go through their learning process. If on the other hand you have a recruit who’s not that into it and who lacks intrinsic motivation you, your team and the recruit will have a tough time. With all the energy and sweat it takes on all sides to go through such a journey of learning it’s really a must to have the right motivation to stick with it and to not give up when the first bump in the road or frustrations hit. Sometimes it can be frustrating, but a mentor has the possibilities to motivate by e.g. showing the recruits past progress or mirroring their own mistakes. This little spark of motivation can evolve to something greater. It’s no flat learning curve to become a software developer but with sufficient support and enough motivation you will be successful.
Don’t forget about Fun — Gina Linetti
Just as Gina Linetti brings her unique flair to the Nine-Nine, encouraging creativity and innovation among new developers can lead to fresh perspectives and out-of-the-box solutions. Embracing the diversity of skills and backgrounds within the team can contribute to a culture of learning and continuous improvement. Also, in the spirit of Gina it’s really important to not forget about having fun together and to make work pleasant. Team events or discussing topics out of context regarding work are really refreshing and an opportunity to get to know each other better. Quite frankly a bootcamp style of police academy with people shouting orders sounds more like a nightmare to us than a nourishing environment to learn together as a team.
Conclusion
In this blog we showed how incorporating the spirit of our favorite TV-precinct into the onboarding process of our newest junior members can not only make the experience more engaging but also set new software developers up for success in their roles. Stay tuned for more insights on our journey and the lessons we learn along the way!
We hope you enjoyed our blog, and we would love to see you next time!
Your three DATEV Nine-Nine detectives,
