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Ansible DevTools Open Source Mentorship

Ansible DevTools team works almost exclusively on upstream projects, we do engage with other contributors every day. That is why, we are welcoming various periodic mentorship programs.

For mentees

If you want to learn better on how to improve your open-source collaboration and maybe become maintainer of one project, that program might help you achieve this much easier.

The mentorship program should also help you improve collaboration with other open-source projects, especially with those from Python ecosystem.

Checklist

  • [ ] Read and acknowledge our CoC. TDLD; just be nice and friendly!
  • [ ] Join #ansible-devtools matrix or irc channels using a permanent username, preferably the same as your GitHub account. Remain there as that would be the main medium of communication. Matrix keeps messages by default but if you choose the irc bridged room, you will need to use a bouncer to not miss messages while away.
  • [ ] You are welcomed to join or follow us on twitter, reddit and engage with others. Socializing is an important skill to master, but also try to avoid overdoing it. Making your name known to others plays an important part in improving collaboration with them but it is a slow process.
  • [ ] Ask your mentor to setup a weekly meeting with you, likely 30 minutes.
  • [ ] Check time availability during the day and remember when it is more likely to be able to have quick chats with your mentor.
  • [ ] Keep an agenda of items you want to discuss with your mentor, as you are the one that drives the process, not him.
  • [ ] Decide on what you want to focus on. We recommend trying with very easy changes and slowly going for more complex.
  • [ ] You will see that often enough, you discover unrelated problems that need to be sorted before you can even address the one you were working on. You can either fix them yourself or nicely try to persuade someone else to fix them, often they are problems on some external dependencies.

Suggestions

  • Prefer using the public channel unless the question is really sensitive, like a security or a personal one
  • If blocked trying to do something, ask for someone to help you with directions
  • If you fail to understand a particular CI/CD failure, ask about it

For mentors

  • [ ] Maintain a recurrent meetings with your mentee and support them in their goals
  • [ ] Be available on chat, make use of public and private channels
  • [ ] Remember that each side is expected to learn from the other one and that the mentorship program is not about teaching someone that the way you do is the right way.
  • [ ] Welcome mentees to question anything, to see why things are one way or another and allow them to come with new ideas.

Asking for mentorship

  • As mentoring is a personal experience, you will need to ask your potential mentor about it in a private message, chat or email.
  • Check if you have enough available time to invest in that. It would not be unreasonable to assume that at least 4h/week would be needed for at least few months.
  • Be sure you mention what you aim to gain from that experience, what areas you want to focus on.

At the moment this was written, both ssbarnea and ganeshrn may be able to accept a mentee. You should also post a message on ansible/team-devtools#81