Gain insights into performance management for engineering teams. Discover how to set clear expectations, design performance metrics, and provide constructive feedback to enhance team productivity and accountability.

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A manager is responsible for assigning tasks to the team members, keeping tabs on the progress, and analyzing their performance. A good manager must know their strengths and use them accordingly.

This course covers the essentials of performance management in engineering teams. You’ll learn the importance of setting clear expectations and the difference between individual and collective accountability. You’ll learn the importance of performance metrics and design them for your team. Next, you’ll explore ways to keep your team motivated and provide each team member with constructive feedback. You’ll learn how to decide when to let a team member go, including planning for a successor.

By the end of this course, you’ll have learned to apply processes and practices to monitor the performance of your team. You’ll be able to provide timely and constructive feedback to your team, including performance reviews. In addition, you’ll be able to balance a team with members having varying performances and competencies.

Effective Performance Management for Engineering Teams

Terminating somebody's employment (also often referred to as "separation from the company") is going to raise some deeply uncomfortable feelings within you. Assuming you've ever been terminated from a job before, you'll remember how it upended your life, ruined plans, brought up feelings of failure in your head, and more. Your immediate reaction is, "I can't do that to my employee!"

To be clear, *you* aren't doing anything to your employee. If anything, *they* are doing it to themselves, because it's *their* performance, not yours. Or, if you prefer, consider the separation of individual from company to be more of a no-fault divorce: After some period of time, it's clear that "things just aren't working out," and it's time to end the relationship without blame or (hopefully) bitterness.

When veteran managers sit around the campfire and speak of their mistakes, they often admit to a common rookie move: not firing somebody soon enough. Keeping a poor performer around longer accomplishes nothing positive, and sends a horrible message to your team: "As your manager, I'm not strong enough to make the hard call."

However, you can't make this decision from out of nowhere---at any company of any reasonable size (basically any company with an HR department), terminating an employee can *only* be the result of a stepped series of actions, as we discuss in the "Corrections" chapter. You *must* have documentation to support the decision to terminate, and you *must* have given your employee opportunities to improve (via a performance improvement plan, for example). Failure to do this will usually result in HR coming to you and informing you that you cannot separate the employee without having done this.

> **Never say "fired":**
> Reality-TV show hosts aside, the phrase "You're fired!" should never leave a manager's lips, and they most certainly should never come out of yours. If you're in a tense situation with an employee, tossing that off as the ultimate trump card (pun intended) will actually whip around and backfire on you when the HR department informs you that no, you can't fire them, not without cause, where "cause" means documentation and PIPs and so on. Then, when the HR team talks to the employee to inform them that no, in fact they're not fired, you will have undermined your authority completely, and probably given yourself the boot as well.
> You may feel like this undercuts your authority with your team---but if you need this kind of authority to get things done with your team, you're trying to manage by fear, and you really need to rethink being a manager.

For this reason, if you're even *thinking* that you're approaching termination/separation status, you need to connect with HR.


Remember to take a firm stance when terminating a poor-performing employee, and document all supporting evidence.

Introduction

Overview of Performance Management

The Need for Clear Expectations

Accountability

Metrics

Motivation

Feedback

Performance Reviews

Corrections

Termination/Separation

Rewards

The Development of Talent

Conclusion

Failure