Many in the agile community suggest abandoning performance reviews, but few offer suggestions for alternatives. A large percentage of software developers work in an enterprise environment where performance reviews are mandated. What if you could do performance reviews that will honor agile values and not only suck less, but actually provide value to the individual and the organization? We have rolled out such a system successfully with strong support across the enterprise–from the individual colleagues, to people leaders, and even including HR. We will demonstrate the principles and the specific implementation of our system which you can tailor to your organization’s values and constraints.
Learning Outcomes: How to go about designing a performance management system that honors agile values and actually provides value to both the organization and the individuals.
Traditional approach is “Management by objectives” Corporate objectives drive objectives and pay
Driven through “SMART objectives” Problem with SMART objectives is expressed in Dilbert comic "I'm going to code me up a new minivan" where we deliver feature X by date y
Joke: “SOS - smart objectives suck”
SMART Objectives are in fact DUMB
Deming - abolish performance reviews But he didn't say what to replace it with This organization pulled together a different approach
Guiding principles
Five core responsibilities for people
Impact is primary measure of career growth Impact is defined as “behavior plus skills plus opportunity”
The role of a manager is to “Coach, foster, develop”
The role of an employee is to “Evolve, develop, seize (opportunities)”
With promotion comes higher expectations as it is a new job (you can expect to have a lot of development opportunities when you move into a new job) Promotion is not a reward for longevity
We value career development over performance ratings
Career growth is critical It is based on rich conversations
What we did:
Work closely with HR Educate in agile (better than they think we are)
Replaced SMART objectives with core responsibilities framework
Performance model:
Red line is expectation line Senior guy is self directed
Managers found the visual format helpful
Coach behaviors But want impact One expected to drive the other but may not
Use strength to help the weakness
Managers view:
Employees view:
Challenges when integrating with HR system