Todd Little and Andrew Tuttle - Performance Reviews That Don’t Suck

Premise

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.

Summary

Content rating (0-no new ideas, 5 - a new ideas/approach, 9-new ideas): 7

Style rating (0-average presentstion, 5 - my level, 9-I learned something about presenting): 5

Action / Learning

Excellent - get in touch with Todd re background

Presentation

Direct copy: https://submissions.agilealliance.org/attachments/2575

My copy: performance_reviews_that_dont_suck.pdf

Notes

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

(D)on't comprehend uncertainty

(U)nintended consequences

(M)yopic approach to career coaching

(B)ehind every objective is a subjective interpretation

Deming - abolish performance reviews But he didn't say what to replace it with This organization pulled together a different approach

Guiding principles

Value are what we value

Things we say we value is what we should reward

Five core responsibilities for people

Deliver within technical solos

Partner with customer stakeholder

Collaborate with teammates

Build quality in

Take the initiative and innovate

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:

Discovered core responsibilities

Delivery

Business engagement

Teamwork

Quality

Initiative and innovation

Developed expectations by level

With direction

With support

Self directed

Leader

Mentor

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:

How do managers like it - 100% really liked it

Meaningful career development - 85%

Improved perception of performance review - 92%

Employees view:

73% liked core responsibilities vs SMART objectives

57% think helped on career development

68% “my manager helped me what needed to get to next level”

Challenges when integrating with HR system

HR ratings are about performance over career growth

Coarse grade vs linear scale

Possibility of redundant paperwork as this was rolled out

Possibility of title inconsistency in the company (new vs old)