Agile development and the Scrum team environment places different priority on what have traditionally been labelled “soft skills”. Waterfall methodology valued heads-down analysis and development over collaboration. It also valued longer decision making under the guise of thoroughness.
This is a short list of some of the capabilities that should be incorporated into Agile team member evaluation.
Agility
- Flexibility in approach.
- Willingness to work outside of traditional roles.
- Adaptability to avoid barriers.
- Willingness to learn new methods and use new tools.
Personal Productivity
- Contribution to the team’s deliveries, both directly and by assisting others.
Teamwork and Cooperation
- Ability to make the people around them perform better.
- Ability to resolve conflicts with team members.
- Has a stake in the Sprint goals and demonstrates a desire to achieve.
Leadership
- Willing and able to make decisions rapidly.
- Uses good judgment to move project forward.
- Has the ability to cause action to occur within and outside of their direct responsibility.
- Leads by example in their behavior.
Quality
- Number and severity of defects in work products.
- Responsiveness when product defects are identified.
- Commitment to improvement by participating in the retrospective process.
Different levels of seniority come with different expectations within these criteria. Here are some examples of how this criteria can be weighted for different employee levels.
Junior Engineer
|
Category |
Weight |
Specific expectations for the job |
| Agility | Low | Takes on some tasks outside of role (i.e. testing) |
| Personal Productivity | Medium | Works assigned tasks to completion |
| Reports status accurately | ||
| Teamwork and Cooperation | High | Welcomes guidance from other staff |
| Leadership | Low | Willingness to challenge assignments that “don’t make sense” |
| Quality | Medium | Requires review and feedback from senior staff members |
| Expected to improve quickly with experience |
Mid-level Engineer
|
Category |
Weight |
Specific expectations for the job |
| Agility | Medium | Routinely takes on tasks outside of role (testing and analysis) |
| Personal Productivity | High | Works assigned tasks to completion |
| Reports status accurately | ||
| Meets or exceeds corporate velocity expectations | ||
| Teamwork and Cooperation | High | Identifies barriers and is able to resolve some |
| Shares information within team and across product area | ||
| Welcomes and provides guidance to others | ||
| Able to resolve differences in style and approach with other team members | ||
| Leadership | Medium | Willingness to challenge assignments that “don’t make sense” |
| Participating in or developing best practices for software development | ||
| Quality | High | Code reviews expected to show minimal defects |
| Coding tasks expected to meet Siemens quality guidelines | ||
| Reviews the work of others |
Senior Engineer
|
Category |
Weight |
Specific expectations for the job |
| Agility | High | Effortlessly takes on tasks outside of role (testing, customer support, analysis) |
| Makes rapid decisions for a scrum team and product area | ||
| Identifies and implements development tools | ||
| Personal Productivity | Medium | Balances facilitating team productivity with personal tasks |
| Works on design, coding, and architecture tasks | ||
| Reports status accurately | ||
| Exceeds corporate velocity expectations | ||
| Teamwork and Cooperation | High | Can identify and resolve most technical barriers with a SCRUM team and across product area |
| Proactively shares information with team, product area, business unit, and division | ||
| Collaborates with all team members on solutions | ||
| Leadership | High | Makes those in a product area better engineers |
| Set technical goals for themselves, SCRUM team, and product area | ||
| Recommends and establishes best practices for software development | ||
| Quality | High | Is able to run a code review meeting and make judgement on best practices |
| Coding tasks expected to exceed the organization’s quality guidelines | ||
| Reviews the work of others |
