How much time does it take to mentor properly

[Chris_147]

Hi,

I wanted to ask a few questions about mentoring a project.
A possible reason for our project to join would be to increase the
functionality of our project.
One full time student could help us a lot.
However, our project is just made by 2 persons with full time day
jobs, so we only have max 1 our every day to help out. Is this
feasible?
There should be a benefit for both the student and the project so
before applying I want to make sure we (the project) are also up to
the task!

We both are located in Western Europe btw, I don't know if this gives
extra problems for communication (time differences etc)

thanks for any answers,

Chris

[Dirk Haun]

On Feb 26, 8:48 am, Chris_147 <chris.van.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

> However, our project is just made by 2 persons with full time day
> jobs, so we only have max 1 our every day to help out. Is this
> feasible?

The FAQ states:

> Five hours per student per week is a reasonable estimate.
<http://code.google.com/soc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_mentor_time>

From last year's experience, that sounds about right if you take it as
an average. More time will be required during the start of the project
and during the evaluation phases (mid-term and near the end). Once
things are under way and the students know what they have to do, one
hour per day should be more than enough time.

I'd suggest asking for status reports on a regular basis (e.g. per
week) to get some advance warning in case things go off track.

[Leslie Hawthorn]

Thanks Dirk.  You raise a great point about crunch times for mentoring duties.  

While we don't require that organizations ask for status reports from their students, many have found it helpful.  If you do plan to ask for status reports, please make sure that is explicit in your organization's application to the program and, should you application be accepted, communicate this up front to your would-be students.

Lessons learned from past GSoCs:
- Mentoring always takes longer than you think it will
- You cannot over communicate

Cheers,
LH

--
Leslie Hawthorn
Program Manager - Open Source
Google Inc.

http://code.google.com/opensource/

I blog here:

http://googlesummerofcode.blogspot.com  - http://google-opensource.blogspot.com - http://www.hawthornlandings.org