How to best prepare for technical performance review? What to include?

Question

As a Programmer or Software Engineer, how do you best prepare for a Performance Review? If the organization doesn't have pre-defined annual objectives, what type of things do you do to prepare?

How does one translate programming productivity and skills into a review?
When a supervisor isn't hands on, what has worked well to demonstrate a good year f or you?
Does it work to use the review to assert goals for the business, if it needs to move forward technically?
Any other big ticket recommendations?

Answer 1

I keep a list of personal accomplishments that I update every month or so. When review time comes along I print out the top 10 items from that list and hand it to my boss, has worked well so far.

This strategy helps remind my boss exactly what I have been up to in the last year and the significance of my contributions. It also helps refresh my memory to prepare me to talk in detail about specific achievements and the impact to the company. Anything that helps save the company money, improve competitiveness (features that the competition doesn't have) or demonstrates your technical capability by overcoming obstacles are definitely things to put on the list.

Answer 2

I figure there are two distinct areas that should be highlighted - for lack of better terms, let's call them "Business Value" and "Technical Competence".

Demonstrating Business Value is important - it shows how the work you've been doing contributes to the goals of the business as a whole. If you're working for a software company as a developer, this is easy - you can point to features added and bugs fixed.

Technical Competence is how you show that not only are the skills you have now of value to the business, but the skills you're going to have tomorrow will be of value too.

Generally though, sit down and make up a list of all the different activities you've been involved with - a good day by day record of your time will be valuable here. This list will be wider than the range of projects to which you've been assigned, as it should include everything you've done, from helping out other people in the office to code reviews, and beyond. For each activity, identify how it contributed - you helped someone get back to work more quickly by helping them fix their issue, you contributed to design improvements, other team members have learned from you, you've learned from other team members, etc etc.

Answer 3

Any appreciation you got from somebody else (anybody from your team members to the customer) can be mentioned.

Answer 4

IMHO many performance review processes are flawed. Budget for pay raises is set, a team is only allowed to have a certain number of high-performers, reviews are very subjective or like you mentioned the company doesn't do their share of the work by predefining clear objectives, etc., etc. In short, they're often not very motivating.

I've learned that you simply need to create your own career plan and steps to achieve the career you aspire. If you can match that with the company or team objectives that's nice, but your career plan should not be directed by the company objectives. If you see yourself deviating from your career plan within your company you have to look elsewhere.

This allows you to decouple your career plan from the various (flawed) interpretations of what companies think is a good review process. If you do this well you might not always get a good review, but you will definately earn respect and you know that you are working on your career plan, not the company's.

Good luck!

Answer 5

Try to view yourself from the eyes of your supervisor and ask yourself the same questions.

You can translate productivity into "projects finished on time or early, or with extra features". These are the end results that managers can see and recognize.

As already mentioned, keep track of your accomplishments... they will help you build a case for yourself, because being human, you will forget them.

Performance reviews are not only a measure of what you did, but also a potential measure of what you can do. If you have a well defined career progression planned out, it's a good opportunity to present yourself as being qualified for any future openings by tailoring your accomplishments around that.

Answer 6

I best prepare for a Performance Review by looking at what projects and tasks I completed within the evaluation period, consider how the company chooses to do an evaluation as some may use how you do compared to expectations in a few ways or using some other yardstick.

If the organization doesn't have pre-defined annual objectives, it is still a good idea to check in with your boss in terms of how well are you performing, what are some areas you could work on to improve and what strengths do you bring to the organization.

The translation is what did you do and how well did you do it compared to other options you had at the time, e.g. you spend 2 weeks on something that looking back should have only taken 2 days but you learn what new resources you have gained that may be worth it down the line.

I did have a case where my supervisor wasn't hands on and what was done was inquiring with both other developers as well as those in other roles, e.g. Quality Assurance or Project Management to get their opinion, which I found to be a rather useful way to gauge my performance.

Goals for the business can be useful to know, e.g. sales are expected to grow by 100% or the number of employees is expected to double, as well as seeing where you can fit into that role. If this involves getting some training to help build the skills of those within the organization, this should be worked out somehow.

The big ticket recommendations is whether there is a personal performance bonus, a company performance bonus, as well as whether or not there is feedback from you to improve things in the future, e.g. if you want the boss to take a bit more of a hands-on approach ask for that. Performance reviews tend to be a great time to do some analysis both ways, from the organization to you and reverse of that as there may be some process changes to improve how the company runs, e.g. that Pentium 3 development machine should be recycled and a better computer bought to improve productivity.