Agile Employee Reviews and Appraisals
Filed under: Agile, Business, Enterprise, Teams — Aldo Cauchi Savona @ 10:43 am
It’s that time of the year for our annual review and appraisal session here at MC Malta. We all know how tough these sessions can be, especially when you manager walks into the office, sits down, sets his papers right (all the while looking at the papers with big red markings), looks at you with a gloomy face and says “Joe, you’re only a 5 this year and I’m afraid that’s a bit disappointing. You’re team mate, Fred, just got a 9. What shall we do?”
Luckily, most employee reviews are never so bad, but some of us might have been there.
For an Agile perspective, employee reviews and appraisals follow the same principles of Agile retrospectives where we:
- Discover and prove what works and what did not work,
- Analyse and refine our data,
- Find out how to do it better.
All that we do in Agile should work in rapid cycles, have clarity, be time-boxed, empower the employee and focus on the team rather than the individual.
Cycles
Many companies work with yearly performance and appraisals. Being THE review, it places a lot of pressure on the employee and the company. Agility is based on rapid / immediate feedback.
Agile reviews are held on a more frequent basis such as a monthly or weekly review. How can this be achieved? In Agile companies, project and management is tightly integrated with the team itself, rather than disassociated and in another department or location. Also, the team would produce enough daily information to give management a clear indication of what its performance is.
Clarity
Agile reviews are based on clarity in that the criteria for the assessment procedure upon which employees will be reviewed are made available to the employee much before the review meeting.
Time-boxed
Time-boxing is a valuable tool and applies to all areas of Agile processes. The review is based on a specific period the employee was at the company.
Empowering
Agile leadership shifts the focus from a command & control tactic to a culture of mentoring and support. After a set of action points have been identified, management would allow the employee to choose which areas to focus on, and decide on the best way to achieve the chosen goals. Management provides the guidance and supports the employee in his decisions by providing training, time or other resources to achieve the goals set.
Focus on the Team
In order to build a successful team, management should focus on the team by providing a single goal to the entire team. This idea is kept in mind during the review where Agile management shifts the focus away from individual criticism to a team-based point-of-view thus helping to promote the team’s vision. For example, if an employee is highly skilled but lacks good communication thus hindering other team members, this aspect would be highlighted.
The Retrospective Process
Discover and prove what works and what did not work
The first part of an Agile meeting is to collect the data available from various sources. The meeting would review the influence the employee had at different levels including, the Team, the Project and the Company.
In certain Agile companies, it is the team that actually leads the review rather than management. In any case, the team review should be open and in front of all team members rather than behind the closed doors of a manager’s office.
During the life time of a project, the team would generate quite an amount of data that along with process facilitator’s help, is collated into meaningful information for use by project managers and management. This information is also brought into the employee’s review.
The traditional notion of employment in the West is slowly shifting away from the traditional skills-based contact (see Economic Company by Mary Poppendieck) towards a symbiotic relationship (see River or Learning Company by Mary Poppendieck). Here the company and the employee reach an agreement on how they can help each other grow.
Analyse and Refine the data
In this part of the meeting, the data gathered is analysed. Management seem to be addicted to scores (or metrics), so in one form or another, scores will come into play. I myself had to provide scores in an Agile company I worked with. Scores are fine as long as they are used as a tool to provoke discussion rather than as a final judgement. It is important not to compare employees and that the focus of this section is to identify excellent and problem areas.
Action points and Goals
The last part of any Agile meeting is to summarise the collated data into action points. The focus here is on providing possible solutions to the analysed data. See Empowering above.
Further reading
Jeff Sutherland, one of the founders of Scrum, published a Agile review process in 2006 that was in use by a corporation for over 10 years. The process can be found here. The review template can be found here.
Mary Poppendieck, a leader in Lean development, gave a presentation at Agile 2008 on performance appraisals and bonuses. Her slides can be found here.
Other related links:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/leandevelopment/message/2604.
http://runningagile.com/tag/performance-reviews/.
http://linked2leadership.com/2009/01/05/reviewing-the-review-process/.
http://www.leanblog.org/2008/10/professor-channels-w-edwards-deming-and.html.