Evaluation

Purpose

To outline a clear, fair, and replicable process for performance evaluation at Countable.

Scope

Covers our process for self-evaluation, technical tracks and their levels, and the dismissal process.

The purpose of this policy is to “get and keep the right people on the bus” [1].

This page lists “job levels”. Each employee should be assigned a level based on the behaviours listed below from levels 1 to 4.

Performance Evaluation Overview

We’ve created a replicable process for self-evaluation which will continue to be developed and improved. This will be completed twice a year, roughly in July and in January. A copy of the related evaluation spreadsheet will be assigned to you as a Trello card in Admin and Operations at this time.

This is meant to be a self-reflective process, not a stressful one. Independently reflect on your work at Countable over the previous six months and try to answer as honestly as you can.

Here are the components to be tracked:

  1. OKR score: What is your average score the last 6 months?
  2. What do you score in the general criteria for your level? You can assign yourself 0, 0.5, or 1. (In order to progress to the next level, you must achieve at least 75% on these)
  3. What do you score in the guild-specific criteria for your level? (You must achieve these fully to progress to the next level)
  4. What is your biggest opportunity for improvement (getting to the next level, career-wise), and your top strength that we should support?

Provide this information to your manager for feedback, and they will share any adjustments and their perspective on your answers. Your manager should indicate their perspective on your biggest opportunity for improvement and strength as well.

General Criteria

For each job level, the general criteria are roughly grouped into three broader categories of skills:

  • PD - personal development
  • CM - communication
  • PM - project management

Technical Track Criteria

  • DevOps
  • Developer
  • UX / Design
  • Operations

The track your performance evaluation is based on is the one most closely corresponding to your main job responsibilities. You are free to be a part of of other guilds, of course, but you will only be self-evaluating based on tasks from your main track.

Evaluation Questions by Job Level

This section is used in the Process above for self-evaluation.

Level 1

An internship or Junior. Evaluation of fit to Countable’s culture, work style and technical needs.

Professional Development

  • Regularly reviews other team members’ work, and asks questions about it (code reviews, XD links, shared videos, stage sites)
  • You are dependable. The team feels they can rely on you do follow through with things. You document tasks (Trello usually) and follow up on them.
  • Tries to solve problems yourself. But then, asks questions.

Communications

  • Makes meetings on time, checks both email and slack daily, and notifies of absence in advance (and follows communications charter)
  • Often refers to the operations manual, and asks questions about it when something is unclear or could be improved.
  • Makes consistent improvement of any size to the systems around you (flag outdated content from the ops manual, small refactors such as renaming a variable for clarity, make a small design or usability improvement).
  • Shows gratitude to the team (for example, mention them in the #thanks channel) or thank them on other channels.
  • Shares work (screenshots, staging links, XD links, code snippets) with the team and clients in your client- and guild- channels, because seeing great work raises the bar for everyone and is very motivating.

Project Management

  • Speaks up, and asks questions during meetings, because you shouldn’t be in a meeting if you don’t contribute.
  • Checks OKRs mid-month, and asks for help.

Technical Track Questions

UX

  • Makes an effort to understand and interact with end users. For example, is present in discovery meetings, user interviews, usability sessions.
  • Identifies personas using each UI and how, and tests their user stories (UATs) when developing user interfaces (on devices they use). Test your work!

Devs

  • Leave comments in your own code asking questions when you submit your own pull request
  • Completed all training during the onboarding and presented at least once during a developers guild meeting.

Operations

  • Asks questions outside their own guilds about how and why things work at the company.
  • Shares feedback about what they like and suggestions to improve.

DevOps

  • Complete Docker training, and is comfortable running our projects locally
  • Complete Linux training and has a Linux laptop or VM for local work

Level 2

Considered a permanent position. Works directly with clients and other stakeholders on delivering results, only escalating as needed.

Professional Development

  • Help team members with their OKRs.
  • Shows troubleshooting ability to get to the bottom of issues in your technical track.

Communications

  • Actively solicits feedback from teammates and clients almost daily (close to daily).
  • Reminds the team and clients about what our project goal and company goals are.
  • Gives feedback/asks questions on work that team members share (in your client- and guild- channels).
  • Shares links (such as on Slack) to relevant pages in the Ops Manual to help guide the team (you should make an effort to do this rather than offer one-off answers to questions).

Project Management

  • Manages client’s expectation of deliverables and timelines. Is aware of bigger picture of project, and helps the team course correct to stay on track.
  • Takes responsibility for large tasks (> 1 day) and breaks them down into Trello cards (<= 1 day each).
  • Upon completing project tasks, provides summary of work completed (and a screencastify where appropriate) to internal team and project stakeholders in search of feedback.

UX

  • Connect the rest of the team to the users. Lead/implement Usability testing, Wireframes, and/or regularly consult users to clarify your work.
  • Keep user stories up to date. Helps keep technical work aligned with them.

Devs

  • Participate in reviewing others’ code (ex/ respond to comments they’ve left, ask questions)
  • Contributes to (and starts) discussions about stack selection and code quality.

Operations

  • Engages the team on discussions about how we can improve the company.
  • Engages the team in discussion of processes.

DevOps

  • Manages jenkins jobs, implements backups, and writes Dockerfiles
  • Starts discussions on what we can automate

Level 3

Owns a client relationship, leads in a technical area within a guild, or takes on another area of responsibility.

Professional Development

  • Helps to support and teach other team members things inside your technical track, OR takes responsibility for their results and timelines for at least one specific client or project with multiple team members assigned to it.
  • Is competent in more than 1 technical track, and has basic knowledge of all 4. (UX, devops, dev, operations)
  • Takes accountability for our team’s role in business objectives of our clients.
  • Tracks and improves metrics. Is aware of some numbers that matter to the company and engages the team in discussing them.

Communications

  • Makes some contributions to the Ops Manual or other documentation resources
  • Takes responsibility for clients’ business results. Doesn’t blame the client, or external factors. Finds a way to achieve the desired outcome by working around challenges you cannot control.

Project Management

  • Find ways to increase our iteration speed to get closer to the goal quickly.
  • Works towards a clear, shared goal with the client. Follows up on discussions in a constructive way (with respect to objectives). Once it’s clear, prototype something to validate assumptions as quickly as possible.
  • Takes responsibility for the overall success of one or more existing clients or projects.

UX

  • Plans, manages and executes the user research in projects on time to align all stakeholders on a shared understanding of real needs.
  • Teach others to connect with users themselves, and provides resources for getting clear frequent user feedback to the team.

Devs

  • Engages team in discussion of architecture (compares different options with pros/cons)
  • Demonstrates technical ability to create and lead development on a new project and arrive at a business result.

Operations

  • Engages team in discussion and documentation of processes to ensure we have clear goals, plans and roles.
  • Contributes new content to Ops Manual pages, and tags in others to contribute where appropriate.

DevOps

  • Lead discussions on security and/or devops quality metrics
  • Implement systemic improvements applicable to all/most projects

Level 4

Owns a guild, major client group or customer base (business line).

Professional Development

  • Sets standards for whole team in technical track OR responsible for a business area (contributes to several winning proposals and accounts)
  • Evaluates technical work complexity for proposals/quotes and can delegate work appropriately.
  • Stays on top of industry trends in technical track. Can research, understand and explain trade-offs of competing solutions. Posts about opportunities to improve (new tools and trends) in guild channels.
  • Engages with other guild leaders to integrate their technical area with the other technical tracks seamlessly in a ways that help the whole team.

Communications

  • Makes major Ops Manual contributions, involves the team in these to get everyone aligned on how to do our best work.

Project Management

  • Speaks with clients about high-level goals and strategy to create conceptual alignment.
  • Ensure clear project-level or guild-level goals exist, and team engages in discussion of these.

UX

  • Leads the company to continuously improve the experiences we deliver to users with clear processes. Validates progress from outside feedback and measurements (funnels mostly)

Devs

  • Leads the company to continuously improve our developers’ execution of technical work as a team, and demonstrates evidence of our continuous improvement.

Operations

  • Leads the evolution of the company such that we grow while maintaining a culture of producing meaningful work. Keeps team engaged in learning and contributing to discussion on non-guild processes, and they are continuously improving.

DevOps

  • Leads the company to automate environments and other systems and make them reliable. Leads discussion on defining quality metrics, and follows-up with measuring those.

Dismissal

While it sounds like a negative thing, not everyone is a fit for Countable’s culture. We think many people are talented but could have a bigger impact elsewhere which is better for everyone. Things that could result in you being dismissed:

  • Fail to communicate with users, team, and customers resulting in problems.
  • Fail to exhibit most of the behaviours listed at and below your current job level.
  • Fail to take responsibility when you make a mistake, and learn how to prevent it next time.
  • Miss meetings or appointments.
  • Lose track of client requests because they’re not properly logged in Trello, or backlog’s not monitored.
  • Produce low quality work that’s not thoughtful of our future selves and which the team wouldn’t be proud of.
  • Avoid hard discussions and be a “yes person” without thinking about what you’re agreeing to.
  • Go “dark” so clients and team mates are unclear about the project status (no response for over 1 business day, when a response is clearly expected)

[1] Jim Collins, “Good to Great”.

[2] RoadmapSH - this is helpful specifically for devs.