RankandYank

Last week I gave a little tutorial on Agile management. One of the topics I covered was evaluations, ratings, and rewards.

My experience is that in an Agile team -- or any team that has interdependent goals -- individual evaluation and rewards work against team work. In fact, individual ratings, evaluations and rewards, especially forced ranking, break the team.

This was not an idea the entire group was ready to embrace.

"We've got to rank people," one of my students asserted. "How else do people know where they stand!? How else can we manage the slackers?"

I agree people need feedback, but I don't think ranking or rating really helps. How can you rank one contribution against another, especially on a collaboarative team.

What has your experience been with team based evaluation?

What has your experience been when the work required teamwork and collaboration, but the reward/evaluation system emphasized individual contribution?

EstherDerby on 10.04.04

"We've got to rank people," one of my students asserted. "How else do people know where they stand!?

Translation: "How will I know whether my management values my work and, most importantly, me.

"How else can we manage the slackers?"

Translation: "How will I know who to blame when things go wrong?"

What has your experience been when the work required teamwork adn collaboration, but the reward/evaluation system emphasized individual contribution?

In Variable Cultures, where people do whatever they like, individuals who are highly valued by the organization strive to get the assignments that perpetuate their high-priest status. These alleged priests have little, if any, regard for the other members of the team. I have observed that the high-priests have a propensity for either blaming or superreasonable behavior.

Individuals in Variable Cultures who detect they aren't particularly valued by the organization, act outwardly positive but inwardly they give up and thus just try to survive by hunkering down and going dark. In other words, I see lots of placaters.

SteveSmith 2004.10.04

"How else can we manage the slackers?"

My goodness. A team that doesn't know how to deal with members who are "slacking"? I guess then we manage the slackers by teaching the others how to act like any normal group acts when one of its members is falling behind. And I'll give you a clue: it's not by whining to their parents with "proof" in hand. - JerryWeinberg 2004.10.04

This set of "parents" weren't quite ready to believe that their "children" could actually handle this situation on their own.

EstherDerby 10.05.04

Esther,

Don't know if this could work for an Agile team. Last year I tried something different and privately asked the project team lead and the other team members of a very successful project team how they would like recognition. They were not a real Agile team per se, but they performed like an Agile team in many ways. The team lead stated he preferred no public recognition. A few others thought being recognized in front of the boss would be good. We were able to honor each individual request and give them recognition in way that fit for them. The basic team was kept together through another maintenance release and upgrade. It seemed to work. I asked the management to allow the team lead to leave early from work one day with pay to reward him for his efforts and sacrifice during the stressful project.

--JohnSuzuki 10.05.04

Hi, John -

I was thinking of something a little different, formal appraisal and rewards, vs informal recognition. I'm curious why you advocated for the team lead to leave early one day, and not the entire team.

ED 100704

In my experience, Agile teams are perfectly capable of voting misfits (including, but not limited to, slackers) out. More importantly, teams recognized effective behaviors that may pass unnoticed outside of the team--the kinds of behaviors that are often missed by the "line 'em up and shoot the guy on the end" practice that some managers use as a motivational tool.

DaveSmith 2004.10.06

Dave, this matches what I would expect. Can you give some specific examples, both of peer pressure and of the effective behaviors?

ED 100704

I'll give you specific examples in private. Generally, the highly functional teams I've worked with have been very upfront about letting people know where the line is drawn (i.e., what the team's standards are), and are vocal about who is on what side of the line.

DaveSmith 2004.10.07

Esther,

In response to your question about why I asked management to let the team lead leave early with pay and not the entire team:

1) He was a contractor and "technically" could not have the day off with pay, leave early or receive any financial bonus for superior performance. To let a contractor do this was a significant event and really sent a message to him how the organization appreciated his effort. He was paid hourly so he was paid for any overtime (weekend time) that he put in during the project. Bonuses and attendence to special company events were only applicable to full time employees. There were several full time employees on his team and they would eligible for bonuses, free lunches, favorable performance reviews, company parties and promotions. Contractors were not subject to formal appraisal so there would be little formal documentation about the good job he did for the organization. Also, he could be let go at any time.

2) He personally stated to me that he would prefer time off to work on his house. He was not comfortable with public recognition. So we tried to honor that request. He just moved into a new house and needed time off to work on the myriad of projects (yardwork, painting, etc.) associated with a new home.

Also one of the reasons that informal recognition was pursued instead was that formal recognition was rarely done by executive management. I know that many of the individuals that I worked with during my consulting period (on and off for 21 months) were never publically recognized by IT management (site CIO).

JohnSuzuki 2004.10.25

Hi Esther.

Funnily enough I've been doing some work on this topic myself at the moment. I guess partly it depends how visible the reward/evaluation scheme is, and to whom? What would happen if you added objectives which required collaboration with other team members to accomplish?

For example, a user acceptance test manager has an objective relating to an improvement in DRE (defect removal efficiency) for the phase (regional acceptance testing) that follows user acceptance (where he has direct control).

Unless you have a very switched on HR (Human Resources or Human Remains, take your pick) department (does such a thing exist anywhere?) I'm sure you could word the objective in such a way that HR for example wouldn't have a clue what it actually meant!

Incidentally, I think it's these interdependant objectives which are one of the tricks in getting a matrix-managed organisation to work less dysfunctionally than it would otherwise. I've seen number of organisations that seem to flip-flop from having vertical industry sectors to geographical sectors and back again (as if there was a "best" way of being organised). IMHO it's the interdependant objectives that make it work.

PhilStubbington 2004.10.26

Updated: Tuesday, October 26, 2004