The Apprentice Program — An in-depth field report Part II
by Veit Osiander & Michael Seemann
The DEV Apprenticeship Program (AP) has been running for just about three months and is now halfway through. Time for another interim report of two participants — Veit and Michael. They both describe their personal experiences as mentor and Product Owner starting with a short recap of the program itself: The AP is a leadership initiative of ProSiebenSat.1 Tech Solutions to distribute excellence and share knowledge within the organization as well as benefit from network effects. This means selected mentors accompany a group of Apprentices through a six-month Scrum Alliance Program. This results in the certification of the mentees. Currently there are Product Owner, Scrum Master and Software Engineer generations which will successfully complete the program in autumn. The exciting thing about the generations is that each Apprentice gets the opportunity to become a mentor for the next generation after successfully completing the program. This increases the knowledge transfer in our company. The Apprentice Team (AT) is in charge of the entire organization of the AP.
The Apprenticeship Program as a mentor
When I was approached to be part of the Apprentice Program as a mentor, I was thrilled, even though I was not sure what that entailed yet. While the first generation only consisted of Scrum Masters, this time the AP was extended to Product Owners and Software Engineers (DEV).
The landing page of the Apprenticeship Program alone exceeded all my expectations: Detailed descriptions of the organization, structure and implementation of the program in color — awesome! This gave me a first impression of how well organized and structured the program was in total. I underestimated what learning objectives (more about that later) an Apprentice would go through. But at this point, it became clear that there would be even more that I did not know yet.
The kick-off date for the next generation was therefore eagerly awaited! On the kick-off day, all Apprentices (PO & DEVs), the respective mentors and the AT gathered in a large meeting room. There we all got to know each other. After the first rounds of introductions, the Apprentices were allowed to choose their mentors. I had the honor of mentoring two Apprentices. After a successful kick-off, the journey began! We wanted to start right away. But how? Where? What? The AP was based on the Scrum Alliance Learning Objectives in the respective divisions, which were divided into sprints similar to Scrum and provide for a certification at the end. For the DEVs the Certified Scrum Developer Program was chosen with the following overarching topics: Agile values, Scrum, architecture and design, collaboration, test-driven development, refactoring and continuous integration. The respective topics were then divided into learning objectives for the individual two weeklong iterations, so that a program of about six months was created. The learning objectives can be thought of as a story in a Scrum process. At the end of each iteration, there is a review in which the Apprentices present the learning objectives. Everyone in the company can join in and ask questions! To top it all off, each iteration is completed with a retrospective to learn from the experience of the iteration. At the beginning, everything was still very new, each part had to make time to work on the Program on top of their normal work load. Another problem was the connection to the Apprentices, which was difficult to establish in the beginning. As a mentor, you are fully focused on your Apprentice(s), but you don’t have any side tasks that you have to do yourself. Luckily, AT helped us to grow into the role of a mentor with regular coaching dojos, agile workshops and communication seminars. After the first weeks I had grooved myself in quite well with my first Apprentice. We had agreed on a weekly mentor meeting and mostly stuck to it. Flexibility was the magic word here! It was important to me not to let any pressure or stress arise, because everybody had enough daily business for himself. The Apprenticeship program was not supposed to be a MUST event, but an open forum for ideas and exchange of experiences. With my second Apprentice, the process didn’t start off as smooth and we had some problems regarding communication. Fortunately, there were the coaching dojos and mentor retros that helped me understand that people are different and have different levels of involvement. Most of all, being a mentor doesn’t mean acting the teacher, but to support when needed! It was also important that mentors do not solve the problems of Apprentices but rather accompany them on their way and teach them independence. It’s best for the Apprentice to make their own experiences and the mentor showing “crash barriers” so total failures or accidents are avoided. It is still a tricky mentoring problem to find the line between too much and too little: Of course you shouldn’t lose your Apprenticeship, but you shouldn’t suffocate in requests. At the end of this generation, I will certainly be able to understand and share my experiences better!
Then came COVID-19. This was a bit of a challenge for the program and you had to get used to the new situation. The personal contact was now replaced by Zoom meetings. Additionally, Miro boards became a constant companion. The rather tight program of the Scrum Alliance was now stretched so the workload for the Apprentices was not too big. After being on parental leave in April, I rejoined a well-rehearsed team in the beginning of May, which was strengthened by four weeks of remote office. The weekly mentor meetings became more and more important and are still an absolute great time for me in the meeting jungle. In the time I have been participating in the AP, I have been able to improve my language and coaching skills tremendously. The best part of it all: This came free with the AP!
After my re-entry from parental leave, I talked to the AT and my co-mentors several times about the (mental) hurdles, as it was still very difficult for me to understand that Apprentices were not always on my mat! Through the conversations, I found out that it wasn’t about me as a mentor, but that the AP is a joint journey in which mentors and Apprentices getting used to each other — and I support them as a mentor, but don’t take the helm. I also realized that coaching does not mean offering ready-made solutions, but supporting the Apprentice to find his or her own way! This is the only way to bring independence and personal responsibility into the organization. My mentor journey is not over yet and I will definitely be involved again with the next generation — because for me, the AP is the right way to help our company with my energy and knowledge!
In case you now think: “tldr” — here comes the summary: The AP is awesome. Everybody learns from everyone else and we as an organization become better and more agile!
Michael Seemann
The Apprentice Program from the point of a Product Owner Apprentice
When I first was approached with the question if I wanted to join the Apprentice program, I somehow had to think of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, because I hadn’t come across the word “Apprentice” that often. So, I was a little biased, not because of the movie, but because of the Apprentice professions concept. I was unsure if I would be trained enough to teach an Apprentice the craftsmanship of product ownership as a “Master”, but instead was pretty sure that I would need to be taught the very basics of that profession, as I have worked in that role for five to six years already. Boy, was I wrong!
Seeing my Scrum Master sparkle with enthusiasm when she talked about her experience in that program, after a short talk to one of the AP leadership team members and the introduction session, I decided that I was willing to participate in the program. There, I saw the opportunity to connect and exchange with other Product Owners, people in different roles and departments, to reinforce the connection with the company and make good use of my 20% unscheduled time. So, my expected outcome was to be able to support the program as a mentor for the next generation.
For the first two iterations, we had to figure out, how we would arrange ourselves as a team, working on a backlog, which was very unfamiliar to us Product Owners as well as collaborating with the Developers and Scrum Masters fitting the same role as one of the Apprentices. We quickly realized, that the fair amount of experience in that role, that the four of us Product Owner Apprentices had, helped us e.g. in organizing appointments and presenting results in the review. We were able to get a better understanding of the other roles, the collaboration necessary during an iteration and generated a lot of new and refreshed insights, about the purpose and possibilities of our work. It wasn’t all easy and smooth: We also had issues with understanding and applying “self-organized learning”, and we even felt insecure about the expectations regarding the results of the learning objectives. However, we also created a strong bond in our team, pushing ourselves throughout the program, supporting each other in solving problems of our actual products. We had so much opportunity to learn about new methods, trying them out as a team and then applying them in our daily work. We now feel confident to challenge things, that we think need improvement and we also maximized the value of our products.
In the end, all four of us Product Owner Apprentices signed up for participating in the next generation as mentors, because the program helped us to learn, to grow, to rethink our role and work, while establishing a community. We are confident that this will even thrive more when we continue our participation in the program.
