Just share your thoughts and experiences of appraising and rewarding a team member in agile environment. In my experience, I found it very difficult though agile doesn't celebrate the individuals (but it rewards), my organisation does. And I need to comply. Any inputs? Saving Changes...
Very simply, we would know who is delivering most items against the product backlog. Anyone exceeding the expectations must be rewarded. Reward must not be for the best performer but for all who exceed expectations, may them be all. Saving Changes...
Alistair DuguidTechnical Delivery Manager| Informatica CorporationShelton, Ct, United States
It's dangerous business though, trying to first measure an individual velocity rather than at the team level, and then rewarding people based on that individual velocity.
First, it puts team members in competition with each other, which is bad. They should be working together, and helping each other to achieve the team's goals for the iteration.
Next, a metric by which you measure and reward people will increase over time. It might be that people game the system, and deliberately increase estimates for stories they think they might end up working on, or it could be more subconsciously done, but it is still a distortion of estimation and is bad.
Lastly, rewarding people on personal velocity is a bad idea because it will affect their choices in doing the work. People will choose stories with lots of story points, but that they think are easier to complete than other stories of similar point sizes. This distorts how the team does work, and undermines the cohesion of the team. Anything that makes the team members compete with each other is bad.
You might try instead just being honest with the team about how your organization gives bonuses. You might organize a special meeting where the team members all vote anonymously for who they think is the most valuable team member (they can't vote for themselves). On the team, they all know who among them are the most productive and valuable contributors, and you will usually get a fair result from such a process.
But if the team decided to subvert this process, and got together beforehand and agreed that they would share the bonuses by voting for a different person each quarter, that would still be okay, as this is what the team decided. Such behavior increases team cohesion and unity.
If your team is up to it, you can call them all together and have them allocate the bonuses to each other openly and through consensus. This would require team members who have worked together for a while and who already trust and respect each other.
The very act of the team circling the wagons against the corporate culture (that would seek to divde them by valuing them differently and rewarding them perhaps unfairly) has a team-building effect. Fighting HR, and coming up with their own merit-based reward system, would unify the team mightily. A unified team is a great thing. Saving Changes...
That's how we fix the issue at the given time at the organisational level but it is against agile principle. That's where the problem lies. Could you please give your thoughts on that? Saving Changes...
I agree, team velocity comes first and the reward should be for the whole team for better coherence. That's why teams are small in agile. They can sort out their differences amongst themselves and the reward be shared by al team members. Saving Changes...
Good one, Suhail. Not much options right, anything more can be done.
For e.g I gave my team members, appreciation certifications, dinner coupons, movie tickets, some proactive rewards given to all equally amidst tight budget constraints. Saving Changes...
