…ain't the same ballpark,
ain't the same league,
ain't even the same fuckin' sport.
ain't the same league,
ain't even the same fuckin' sport.
(Jules Winnfield – Pulp Fiction)
Sometimes it’s easier: have you ever written a performance appraisal for someone with outstanding performance? If the response is yes, you surely know what I mean (and you are lucky).
It’s a little more difficult to write a performance review for someone who is definitely a “C” performer, isn’t it? It’s surely unpleasant but is only a matter to find out the right words to summarize the bad performance.
But people doesn’t use to be consistent. To use the words of cite Alistair Cockburn:
- People are communicating beings, doing best face-to-face, in person, with real-time question and answer.
- People have trouble acting consistently over time.
- People are highly variable, varying from day to day and place to place.
- People generally want to be good citizens, are good at looking around, taking initiative, and doing “whatever is needed” to get the project to work.”
- People need both think time and communicating opportunities.
- People work well from examples.
- People prefer to fail conservatively than to risk succeeding differently; prefer to invent than to research, can only keep a small amount in their heads, and do make mistakes, and find it hard to change their habits.
- Individual personalities easily dominate a project.
- A person’s personality profile strongly affects their ability to perform specific assignments.
(Alistair A.R. Cockburn, Characterizing people as non-linear, first-order components in software development)
Now I don’t want to bother you with my job...
Have a nice weekend!