Ag i le Aus t in Leaders S IGJune 1 , 2012

Mat t Rober t smat t@mat t - rober t s . comTwi t te r @mu l t i cas tmat t l i nked in .com/ in /cpgmat t r

AGILE PERFORMANCE REVIEWS?

FURTHERDISCUSSION

DE RIGEUR DILBERT

To run an agile organization, managers need to understand that “traditional*” techniques for “managing” people simply are not eff ective and modern** principals must be adopted. By understanding what motivates knowledge workers and leading them, your teams will constantly adapt and grow, delivering higher and higher value to the company. Many other positive side eff ects will emerge.

By constantly following these principals, you will either bring massive organizational value (happy teams delivering high value work) or get fi red. Possibly both (keep this in mind—seriously)

*What we call “traditional” came out of mass production era of 1930s and 1940s driven by companies that needed to scale for war efforts and had unlimited demand—there wasn’t anything scientific about it.**Modern as of 1950 (yes, seriously, it’s been a while)

KEY TAKEAWAYS (THE FINE PRINT)

What they are Gamed (by EVERYONE) Subjective to the manager Awesome at destroying trust that is critical for individual

contributors and managers to operate effectively in rapidly changing conditions

A fantastic way of giving the HR organization undue power and influence

Throw-away work for all involved (i.e. WASTE)What they are not

A good way of assigning raises Fair (to ANYONE) A way of attaining agility as a business A good way of new managers to learn about

incoming individual contributors to theirteam.

PERFORMANCE REVIEWS DESTROY VALUE IN AN ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE WORKERS

Almost everyone in Hyperformix was on a Performance Bonus System tied to quarterly corporate goals. Laid down by the Board of Directors Negotiated with Senior Management Team Worked with Individual Contributors (IC) to create alignment 3 meetings per quarter between manager and IC—beginning,

middle, end (I added one in the middle to make sure that the IC was on track)

Managers could not achieve 100% without their teams achieving 100% (aligning performance incentives)

This created another level of alignment with the business goals and what people did. Yes, we already had Scrum that did that for us as well as a team focused on Agile values and principals, so almost all of these were HIGHLY paid out.

I still had a problem with it, but it didn’t completely suck

AN ALTERNATIVE – THE PERFORMANCE PREVIEW*

*”Performance Preview” taken from Get Rid of the Performance Review, but the system was created independent of the book.

MANAGER QUARTERLY GOAL – BEGINNING OF QUARTER

MANAGER PERFORMANCE – END OF QUARTER

INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTOR QUARTERLY GOAL – BEGINNING OF QUARTER

INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTOR QUARTERLY GOAL – END OF QUARTER

Additions

During Quarter

Removal During Quarter

Categories of IC are the same as

the Manager

THE ELEPHANT ON THE ROOM – APPRAISALS AND COMPENSATION BY MARY AND TOM POPPENDIECK

YouTube Videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSYlqx1Yvqk.PDFhttp://bit.ly/XOLWcI

MATT’S VASTLY INCOMPLETE READING LIST FOR THIS SUBJECT AREA

Get Rid of the Performance Review, Samuel A. Culbert with Lawrence Rout

PeoplewareTom DeMarco andTimothy Lister

SlackTom DeMarco