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Contents
> Checklist: Does your team need a performance review?
> A step-by-step guide to performance review
> Software engineer performance review example
The most important asset for any tech company is its knowl-
edge workers. This is especially true in the context of any
digital transformation your business might be going through.
As the company reimagines the way it operates and delivers
value to its customers, the quality of your human resources
becomes paramount.
In such an environment, the best tool to gain insight into your
team’s current state and identify the possible skill gap is an ef-
ficient, robust, and scalable software engineering performance
review. Software engineers and even engineering managers
- and, in fact, all of your employees - require frequent perfor-
mance evaluation.
In this guide, you will get all the information and tools you
need to run a super effective performance review, as well ana-
lyze its results, and boost the productivity of your tech team.
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Does my team need
a software engineer
performance review?
How can you tell if a performance evaluation is due for a tech
team? Here is a handy list of the most common signs a man-
ager needs to be on a lookout for:
> The team doesn’t meet deadlines or creates low-value
products
> Team members show signs of developer burnout
> The company doesn’t have clear career paths
> There is no feedback culture
Let’s take a closer look at these problems a software develop-
ment team might experience and what an engineering manag-
er can do about it.
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The team doesn’t meet deadlines
or creates low-value products
As far as red flags go, this is definitely the biggest and the
brightest of the bunch.
If you’ve noticed that your team’s performance is slipping,
deadlines are being missed and the end result of your soft-
ware development efforts is sub-par - a developer perfor-
mance evaluation is overdue!
Most performance-related issues like this can be traced back
to either developers or managers.
What’s important here?
To identify the real reason for poor performance.
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The devs might:
> lack some crucial skills or tools
> be caught up in too much busywork
> feel stressed
> spend lots of time reviewing code
The managers might:
> distract the team and force them to multitask
> set unclear goals and expectations
> set deadlines that are too strict and unrealistic
> fail to provide enough job security and satisfaction to a
dev team
Solution:
The real reason for the poor performance of a software devel-
opment team can be identified with a proper review. It helps
identify the skill gaps of the team and build development pro-
grams, both for managers and engineers.
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Team members show signs
of developer burnout
Maintaining employee satisfaction is an extremely important,
yet often overlooked, aspect of managing a team.
Engineers are particularly prone to burnout and you, as a man-
ager, need to fight the cynicism and procrastination that often
stem from burnout.
Frequently touching base with your employees is the best way
to keep track of their mental and emotional well-being.
This, in turn, will increase their productivity and engagement,
and leave you with a happier, faster, more efficient team. After
all, it’s a known fact that developer happiness directly influ-
ences the quality of code they produce.
The cruel irony of developer burnout is that the most dedicat-
ed, productive, and emotionally invested employees, the fabled
20%, are at the highest risk of burning out.
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What’s important here?
The goal of a good manager is to catch the early signs of de-
veloper burnout (find them in our blog post) and prevent de-
velopers from chronic stress.
Solution:
Constructive feedback from a team helps prevent developer
burnout and solves many of the problems leading to it. During
a well-organized and unbiased review, they can get support
from their peers and management, find their professional
weaknesses and help deal with challenging tasks.
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The company doesn’t have clear
career paths
A good balance between a rigid structure and a free creative
environment is something all managers dream of.
Sadly, the reality is more complex than that.
> Oftentimes, team members can find themselves lost in
the company’s structure
> Employees don’t possess a clear understanding of var-
ious positions within the company, and how they can
advance to a new level
> Many managers mistakenly base promotions on how
much time an employee has spent with the company
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What’s important here?
Unfortunately, this approach leads to a situation where initia-
tive, skills, and productivity aren’t rewarded.
Solution:
This is where a timely performance review can help. Imple-
menting a schedule of performance reviews and conducting
them properly can help solve these issues.
At the very least, it will allow your company to make smarter
decisions about grade raise and help you build the necessary
skill development programs for your software engineers.
Doing so puts you in a position where each developer knows
exactly where they stand at the moment, how they can ad-
vance up the career ladder, and which skills they should be
focused on developing.
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There is no feedback culture
Software developers, by nature of their profession, can be quite
isolated from the rest of the company.
What’s important here?
Remote work and isolation leave employees with
no opportunity:
> To provide constructive feedback to their peers and to
their managers
> To get feedback on their own performance
> To receive pointers for further growth and professional
development
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Solution:
This problem can be solved with regular performance reviews.
By making sure your employees have a chance to talk to each
other about their performance and the current state of the
team, you can nurture a feedback culture within your company.
If your developers can be frank with each other about their
skills, the issues they’re facing in their day-to-day, and their
thoughts about the company in general, they will also be more
comfortable discussing this with you and other managers.
By framing 360-degree reviews as feedback instead of critique,
you can ensure your team is always on the same page.
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Benefits of software
engineer performance review
So, why isa software developer review good?
> Improves team performance
> Increases developer engagement
> Helps make decisions about promotion transparent
> Helps build skill development programs
> Improves relationships
To sum up, the importance of performance reviews can’t be
overestimated, and every tech team needs to hold it on a reg-
ular basis. Now, let’s find out more about how a manager can
organize a review in their company.
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Now, it’s time for the important questions: who does the re-
viewing? And how do you go about setting up this process?
The short answer is, it’s a team effort. The best approach is
conducting 360-degree reviews.
To put it simply, 360-degree feedback is a system in which em-
ployees receive confidential, unbiased feedback from the peo-
ple who work around them and, in turn, provide their opinions
about their colleagues’ performance and professional growth.
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Advantages
of 360-degree review:
> Provides a full picture of each employee’s and team’s
skills
> Makes it easy to spot development opportunities
> Allows people to know how they’re seen in the company
and makes their opinions heard
> Increases self-awareness, builds confidence and boosts
morale
> Empowers the employees, improving their job satisfac-
tion and reducing turnover
> Creates a culture of openness, feedback, and collabora-
tion
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Developer review
If we consider the review of a software developer as an ex-
ample, the main goal here is to assess their hard skills, with a
focus on possible skill gaps. This will be the best indicator of
their day-to-day performance and the quality of the product
they’re able to deliver. If a certain developer is lacking, a per-
formance review will help you build a roadmap to bring them
up to speed and improve their skills.
At the same time, you need to evaluate how well each em-
ployee fits in with the rest of the team, what their professional
goals are, and how they see their future with the company.
To get all these important insights, you need as much data as
possible. This is why each developer and software engineer
needs to be reviewed:
> By the manager
> By the product team
> By the rest of the department
> By themselves (self-review)
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Engineering manager
(team lead) review
The same idea applies to managers and team leads. And while
hard skills and proficiency with tools aren’t that relevant for
engineering managers, knowing how they perform in relation
to their team, and the company in general, is incredibly im-
portant.
This is why managers and team leads need to be reviewed:
> By their direct reports
> By the CTO
> By the product manager (product team)
> By themselves (self-review)
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What do you evaluate
in a review?
(Skill matrix templates)
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How to review a developer
Here is what a 360-degree performance review of a Python
software developer may look like. Remember, you need as
much data and as many different perspectives as you can get.
This means you’ll need some input from the rest of the team,
in order to determine where each dev stands on their:
> Core skills: Python, Web frameworks, Database search,
Git, Design patterns
> Optional skills: Task scheduling, Algorithms, Real-time
communication
> Other domains: DevOps
> Leadership skills
> Soft skills: Collaboration & communication, Individual
performance
> Product skills
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This skill matrix will help you be
strategic about the roles
of reviewers and the questions
you ask them.
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How to review an engineering
manager
When it comes to evaluating the skills of engineering man-
agers, the same principle applies. You need to gather insights
from as many sources as you can, which means going both to
the upper management and the lead’s direct reports. Here is
what a skill matrix for an engineering manager looks like:
> Team management
> Company skills
> Quality management
> People management
> Technical skills
> Project management
> Knowledge management
> Soft skills: Personal skills, Communication
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This table will help you to find out
what to write in a review
of an engineering manager,
depending on the role of a reviewer.
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How often should you hold
a developer performance
review?
After you have your ‘Whats’ figured out, it’s time for the ‘Whens’
- how you schedule your performance reviews is quite import-
ant, especially considering the software developer life cycle.
This life cycle should be your main reference point, as it pro-
vides a great baseline and a handy reminder about keeping
your reviews regular. This, perhaps, is the most important thing
about scheduling your evaluations - they need to stay regular
and conform to a schedule that your employees are familiar
with.
However, you must also take into account each employee’s
needs, goals, and progress. Meaning, you sometimes need to be
proactive and initiate a review when you feel like a developer
is in need of feedback. Likewise, you need to be open to your
employees’ requests for evaluation.
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To ensure a correct balance, consider the following evaluation
frequency. How often you should hold software developer
review:
> Onboarding skills evaluation review
> 3-month performance review
> 6-month performance review
> Annual performance review
> Review after completion of a major product
> Review on developer request
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After the review
Once the evaluation is complete, you need to organize your
findings and make them actionable.
This is the stage where you turn data into insights, opinions
into actions, desires into goals. On top of that, you must keep
tabs to track and compare each employee’s performance over
time, as well as the general state of your team as a whole.
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Each case is going to be different, but try to keep the follow-
ing universal goals in mind when analyzing the results of your
performance reviews:
> Identify your team’s strengths and weaknesses
> Create development plans for every team member
> Make decisions on promotions and rewards
> Integrate individual growth plans with your
team’s skill sets
After reading this part of the guide, you got an understand-
ing of how to build a review process. In order to make it even
more effective, let’s look at how a developer performance re-
view is held in practice with the help of Vectorly.
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Run your 1st review
for free on a 25-min
call with Vectorly
Book a demo call
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Vectorly allows you to automate, simplify, and speed up the
entire process of developer performance reviews, making them
transparent and clear to all parties involved. Let’s see how it
works, step-by-step.
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Step 1.
Create (or choose) a skill
matrix
The first step is to create or choose a ready-made skill matrix.
Here, you can determine which skills are required for each of
the roles in your company, and at what level you expect these
skills to be.
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Step 2.
Invite reviewers
Now it’s time to invite the employees to start the review pro-
cess. After you’ve created and finalized the job map (profile)
for each of the positions, you can invite the reviewers to start
filling in the profiles of their colleagues and, of course, write a
self-review for themselves.
List of reviewers
for 360-degree
performance review
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Step 3.
Get review results with skill
insights
After all the reviews have been submitted, you can access the
analytics to see your team’s results, along with a per-employee
breakdown. This report will make it easy to determine which
skills your team lacks and which skills each individual employ-
ee needs to improve upon.
Analyzing review
results in Vectorly
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Using the table below it’s easy to
find the skill gaps of each team
member and build a development
plan.
Software engineer performance
review results in Vectorly
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Step 4.
Build development plans
for the team
Now, it’s your turn to take action! Step number four is when
you can finally begin to use this data to see what specific steps
you need to take to improve your team.
Once you have identified any potential skills gaps, you can
start building development plans for each employee. You can
select the necessary skills and set deadlines for each. For each
of the skills, you can create custom tasks or share some read-
ing and watching material with each employee.
Choose skills to create a development plan
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Step 5.
Track the progress
After you finished a review and created development plans for
the team, a manager should track each employee’s progress.
Regular one-on-one meetings are the best way to do this. To
save time for preparation, you can use ready-to-use
1-on-1 meeting templates like this one:
Biannual
performance
review
> How do you evaluate your performance?
Did you meet you personal goals?
> How comfortable are you with
the company’s values?
> What are your major accomplishments
in 6 months?
Get templates
43. 43
Run your 1st review
for free on a 25-min
call with Vectorly
Book a demo call
44. 44
Key ideas
> Regular high-quality performance reviews are your main
tool to get insight into your team’s current state.
> Such performance evaluations can help solve a number
of issues your team might be facing, before they grow to
become a serious problem.
> The best way to conduct these evaluations is by doing
360-degree reviews. Performance reviews should be a
team effort.
> Software developers and managers require different ap-
proaches, but the methods and the logic should remain
the same.
> Base your evaluation schedule on the software develop-
er life cycle, but consider each employee’s unique cir-
cumstances first.
> Approach these reviews mindfully, with a clear goal in
mind, and organize your findings.
> Discuss the results of a review with your teammates and
build professional development plans to develop the
lacking skills.
Book a demo call
