- Oct 22, 2000
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And this is why you don't let the business write a project's foundational documents (with my commentary in parentheses):
Design Criteria:
- Drives a performance culture based upon accountability at all levels in the organization.
(What the fvck does this mean? How is it measured? What defines a "performance culture"? For what are "all levels" accountable?)
- Has integrity and is perceived to be fairly and equitably administered; ensures calibration of ratings application within and across groups.
(Define "integrity". How on earth can any system anywhere ever hope to control the perceptions of all users? How are perceptions measured? Since calibration is an offline process performed by managers in closed-door sessions, how can the system possibly ensure that this happens correctly?)
- Captures an individual's performance contribution, such that performance is clearly differentiated using agreed guidelines for performance distribution and a value can be placed on it so that it can be translated into an individual reward via separate compensation processes.
(Translation: Is scored numerically. Also, managers perform the scoring, not the system, so it is the managers' responsibility to ensure appropriate distribution of scores, not the system's.)
- Measures an individual's performance separate and apart from company performance, yet tightly aligns individual performance objectives to company strategy, such that the aggregate company performance results would naturally correlate with the aggregate individual performance distribution.
(Separate and apart? Is there some new science of which I am unaware that allows two entities to be separate but not apart? Also, aggregate individual performance will always correlate with company performance; whether negative or positive, there will always be at least some correlation. What you mean is that you want aggregate individual performance to be positively correlated with company performance. Of course, we're still missing any measurable means to determine whether this criterion has been met.)
- Incorporates the results an individual achieves (the "what") and the value-based behavioral actions that the individual takes (the "how") into the individual's overall performance assessment.
(Translation: Allows evaluation of an employee's behavior as well as his or her results. Still doesn't provide a model for doing this. How should it incorporate behavioral evaluation? A numeric rating? A percentage modifier? A free-text field?)
- Includes a component focused on an individual's personal development.
(What sort of component? A free text field? A drop-down list of choices for areas of improvement? A drop-down list of choices for areas of excellence? A list of classes integrated with the Learning Management System?)
- Ensures that individuals will be able to impact their personal objectives by recognizing the variation in role/level on the ability to impact company performance.
(What the hell? There are a few individuals whom I would love to see "impact" something at high speed by this point. Translation: People at higher levels of the organization should have their individual goals weighted less and the company's performance weighted more. Even with the translation, there needs to be firm definition of what the individual/company split percentages should be, how many ranges there should be, and how a person is determined to fall within a specific range.)
- Clearly defines participant roles in the process.
(The system needs to do this? Shouldn't your training cover this sort of process issue? Hardly in scope for system design.)
- Is easy to understand and more user-friendly than the current system.
(The current system is a fustercluck of MS Word documents with no standardization. What metrics will be used to define whether the new system is more or less user-friendly? Flexibility? Systematization necessarily limits flexibility; in fact, standardizing the process to eliminate the ability of "rogue managers" to do their own thing is one of the stated reasons for starting this project. Those "rogue managers" will certainly not think the new system is "user friendly" as it will force them to match the corporate standard process. We need to know the specific metrics that will be used to determine whether the system is user-friendly and those metrics must be both measurable and entirely objective.)
*sigh*
ZV
Design Criteria:
- Drives a performance culture based upon accountability at all levels in the organization.
(What the fvck does this mean? How is it measured? What defines a "performance culture"? For what are "all levels" accountable?)
- Has integrity and is perceived to be fairly and equitably administered; ensures calibration of ratings application within and across groups.
(Define "integrity". How on earth can any system anywhere ever hope to control the perceptions of all users? How are perceptions measured? Since calibration is an offline process performed by managers in closed-door sessions, how can the system possibly ensure that this happens correctly?)
- Captures an individual's performance contribution, such that performance is clearly differentiated using agreed guidelines for performance distribution and a value can be placed on it so that it can be translated into an individual reward via separate compensation processes.
(Translation: Is scored numerically. Also, managers perform the scoring, not the system, so it is the managers' responsibility to ensure appropriate distribution of scores, not the system's.)
- Measures an individual's performance separate and apart from company performance, yet tightly aligns individual performance objectives to company strategy, such that the aggregate company performance results would naturally correlate with the aggregate individual performance distribution.
(Separate and apart? Is there some new science of which I am unaware that allows two entities to be separate but not apart? Also, aggregate individual performance will always correlate with company performance; whether negative or positive, there will always be at least some correlation. What you mean is that you want aggregate individual performance to be positively correlated with company performance. Of course, we're still missing any measurable means to determine whether this criterion has been met.)
- Incorporates the results an individual achieves (the "what") and the value-based behavioral actions that the individual takes (the "how") into the individual's overall performance assessment.
(Translation: Allows evaluation of an employee's behavior as well as his or her results. Still doesn't provide a model for doing this. How should it incorporate behavioral evaluation? A numeric rating? A percentage modifier? A free-text field?)
- Includes a component focused on an individual's personal development.
(What sort of component? A free text field? A drop-down list of choices for areas of improvement? A drop-down list of choices for areas of excellence? A list of classes integrated with the Learning Management System?)
- Ensures that individuals will be able to impact their personal objectives by recognizing the variation in role/level on the ability to impact company performance.
(What the hell? There are a few individuals whom I would love to see "impact" something at high speed by this point. Translation: People at higher levels of the organization should have their individual goals weighted less and the company's performance weighted more. Even with the translation, there needs to be firm definition of what the individual/company split percentages should be, how many ranges there should be, and how a person is determined to fall within a specific range.)
- Clearly defines participant roles in the process.
(The system needs to do this? Shouldn't your training cover this sort of process issue? Hardly in scope for system design.)
- Is easy to understand and more user-friendly than the current system.
(The current system is a fustercluck of MS Word documents with no standardization. What metrics will be used to define whether the new system is more or less user-friendly? Flexibility? Systematization necessarily limits flexibility; in fact, standardizing the process to eliminate the ability of "rogue managers" to do their own thing is one of the stated reasons for starting this project. Those "rogue managers" will certainly not think the new system is "user friendly" as it will force them to match the corporate standard process. We need to know the specific metrics that will be used to determine whether the system is user-friendly and those metrics must be both measurable and entirely objective.)
*sigh*
ZV
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