Performance Reviews in an Agile environment

Main Aspects
Individual goals that are adapted to the fact that individuals are members in an Agile team
Setting up Team Goals Shared by all team members Communicated to team together Feedback and coaching given to the team, not individuals Same evaluation/score to all team members

Both individual goals and team goals should be setup in collaboration with the team/individual. Ask people to suggest their goals. Consider it another indicator of maturity of self-management capabilities.

References
http://www.poppendieck.com/measureup.htm - about how to measure/compensate in a group accountability env http://agilediary.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/individual-performance-in-agile-teamassessment-and-individual-burndown-charts/ http://runningagile.com/2008/01/22/review-process-for-agile-team-members/

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Individual goals Categories and Examples

Be involved in the requirements phase: be the Focus team Focal point to the Product Owner Perform at least one lateral/cross functional task along the year

Expand your knowledge and

experience in XX relevant area and learn business of new areas (be able to independently perform XX tasks)

Personal development

Team contribution
Provide full visibility to the team of my work progress and impediments, effectively utilizing using team members without involving managers. Share and proactively transfer my professional knowledge to the team and help others performing their tasks. Aligning with team rules and norms. Becoming more active and proactive part in the team, taking more initiatives. Enrich team's knowledge and capabilities: Identify areas of your expertise, carry out a knowledge transfer sessions, qualify new team members, provide support on top of your daily tasks. I work on whatever contributes most to the team's goals, irrespective of my actual job title.

Business/task oriented
Release all your deliveries in time, scope and requested quality Reach high quality of our products with low amount of escaping defects and defects generation. Get familiar with X area Get at least one innovation from idea to implementation Enlarge automation scope and usage Introduce cost savings initiatives

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Sample SCRUM TEAM targets

Value/Category Predictability

Goal Name Deliver frequently, on time, quality, with maximal scope

Goal Description Deliver ________ (Service Pack / Feature Pack / Version) on time and quality, with maximal scope. Or Deliver X versions this year, on time and quality and maximal scope.

How to measure Delivery of committed scope, stretch goals(expected), meeting exit criteria

Efficiency

Stable and Achieve stable and improving improving team Throughput/Velocity velocity and efficiency, allowing effective release planning and diagnostic for the team

SP / Sprint % of new functionality covered by SP Estimation predictability stable actual effort per SP Feature Points per Sprint Feedback from Product Manager

Customer Centric

Improve Support

Improve support delivered, as well as reduce need for support

APS statistics (Average lead time, number of bugs, etc.) Initiatives that drive down need for support or performance on KPIs, with measurable improvements %/# of cases escalated to and beyond Dev Manager

Efficiency and Effectiveness

Focus

Concentrate and Focus reduce Work

How much work is taken on in the same time (WIP)

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Efficiency and Effectiveness

Sustainable Pace

in Progress / MultiTasking Reach an energized but sustainable pace of work that delivers a lot of value while allowing team to continue delivering over time (no burnout) AND growth in capabilities/ performance Achieve high flexibility to changing realities and requirements

Velocity + Quality + Growth Investment + Employee satisfaction/retention

Customer Centric

High flexibility Welcome Changes

Efficiency and Effectiveness

Improve engineering practices

automation, coding standards, code review, Test-DrivenDevelopment etc.

Cycle Time from starting work to delivering to customer Lead time from customer need to delivering. Automation Coverage % % Amount of code reviewed during sprint minimize escaping defects minimize missing functionality defects Customer Feedback regarding quality and fit of deliverables Ease of integration/adoption Feedback from adopters/delivery Knowledge matrix. Identify weak points and set targets and plan (part of SCRUM TEAM planning) to increase knowledge where lacked Good balance of

Excellence / Efficiency and Effectiveness

Improve Quality

Improve quality of deliverables

Collaboration

Team Versatility

Work towards achieving high levels of Backup/ Redundancy enables flexibility to changing workloads/surprises.h

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Collaboration

Collective Commitment and Delivery

Collective accountability towards committed goals

Collaboration

Personal Development of Team Members

Influence and help achieve team members individual personal development, in light of team and individual needs Achieve open communication allowing discussion and resolution of any and all issues affecting the team performance

generalized knowledge and specialization areas minimal bottlenecks due to specific team members KT plan for specialization areas, and execution on a sprint by sprint basis. Ability of any team member to take any task Amount of knowledge types considered during sprint planning to detect capacity issues Team members work on whatever contributes most to the team's goals, irrespective of their actual job title Team members meeting their individual personal development goals Team members satisfaction / retention rate Less Reliance on Dev Manager to handle HR interactions/conflicts in the team Less conflicts, Good team spirit/motivation/ene rgies Feedback from Program Manager/Product Manager/Scrum Teams in Project/Other Scrum

Collaboration

Open Communication

Collaboration

Collaboration beyond the team

Achieve effective collaboration with other teams and roles

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 Collaboration Impediments Removal Work together to identify and remove impediments at the individual and team level. Invite others to help with own tasks. Create a sustainable continuous improvement culture and process, identifying and driving improvements in team delivery performance

Teams # of escalations to Dev Manager High-quality integrations??? Speed of impediments removal # of impediments escalated to Dev Manager unnecessarily Introduce at least X initiatives/ideas and follow it through. Effective and creative retrospectives, with follow up Continuous and proactive push towards team and project goals Present examples of growth initiatives that were performed in the team. Defined and observed Team Rules, Done Criteria (Definition of Done applied to all development tasks, standard set by the team/project, NOT the acceptance criteria from Product Manager) Team members feel meetings are effective Decisions are taken quickly, not dragged across many meetings Decisions are implemented quickly

Excellence

Continuous Improvement Culture/Process

Growth

Motivate to Grow

Excellence

Create and meet high standards

Team members challenge each other to grow in areas serving the team and individuals Team members create high standards of work Team Rules, Definition of Done, etc.

Effectiveness / Efficiency

Effective Meetings and Decisions

Have effective meetings driving effective decisions that are executed on a timely manner

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Effectiveness / Efficiency

Try and experiment techniques for improvement

The team attempts and adopts new techniques that enhance its efficiency and effectiveness The Team finds ways to interact with project/product leadership and drive changes that it feels are necessary

Present examples, at least some with actual ROI (ok to have some that fail, but fail FAST) Initiatives driven by the Team Constructive suggestions of how to change things

Leadership

Pro-active involvement in Project/Product level initiatives/decisions

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