Well, Agile Teams Should be Appraised as a Team ... Hmmmm

It may be useful to think this way. Agile teams are cross functional, self organizing, and collectively accountable for work results. Therefore, they should receive one score at team appraisal, and hence one raise, and one bonus, and one etc.

Very true. But, appraisals have another merit other than calculating the yearly raise. It should be used an invaluable individual motivator for self improvement, specially for teams whose work products involve highly innovative and creative work .. wow!

Usually, what I have seen in enterprises is that individual appraisals were a source of all kinds of nuisances, for the individual, for his manager, for senior management, for all the organization. It is rarely accepted, and usually results in demotivation of 90% of the individuals who see the results as unfair and biased.

There are causes for such phenomena, and here are five of them:

1. Using process data in evaluation, like the number of bugs, or the code review issues, or the produced LOC per hour!
2. Using everyday events and situational happenings as evidence for good or bad evaluation
3. Mixing individual productivity and team productivity metrics, and using both interchangeably while evaluating the team.
4. Single-rater evaluation by direct manager.
5. Using the appraisal as a motivational tool. That is, let's appraise the team, and give them a raise so that they become motivated. This doesn't work, and the higher the raise become, the more demanding the team will be.

Ok, how to appraise Agile teams? I'll prepare a model for that. This model sets two objectives for evaluation: Evaluating the process, and evaluating the individuals. The metrics and techniques used to evaluate the process are completely different and disjoint from metrics and techniques to evaluate individuals.

This will be my work for the upcoming several weeks. Keep alert!