‘Fail-Fast’ is an oft-debated, controversial topic that involves trying something new, obtaining rapid feedback and quickly inspecting and adapting. It’s practiced in methods of high uncertainties , where it’s less expensive to start a product. The task is to learn whether the decisions work. If they don’t, the Project is killed fast, and focus is moved on to the next thing.
It’s seen as a controversial move in the general press and media, which often sees it as reckless and irresponsible. It’s also a much criticized move in Agile/Lean/DevOps where the ‘fail often’ approach is not encouraged.
Further Reading
“Fail Fast, Fail Often: How Losing Can Help You Win”(book), by Ryan Babineaux
Thriveni Shetty is leading the HR Practice at INNOVATION ROOTS. She has overall 7+ years of experience in field of HR. At INNOVATION ROOTS, she keeps the work environment hale and healthy. She is also responsible for implementing & streamlining the HR Process, including Talent Management, Learning and Development, Compensation and Employee Relations.
She is working on improving her skills on Agile and aspires to learn the implementation of Agile principles in HR.
We at INNOVATION ROOTS, ever since our inception have helped numerous customers all over the world through their Agile transformation and have trained thousands of professionals in various Agile Methodologies. A lot of customers, we have worked with, who happen to be top MNCs and small sized companies have always faced problems with performance management of their employees, which in turn results in poor output at individual level and ends up affecting the performance of the team in a large enterprise or the entire company in case it’s a small sized one.
Thriveni Shetty spoke about Lean Agile Performance Management at Agile Gurugram 2017. She started off by talking about the ‘Traditional Performance Management’ method and it’s disadvantages. She said, the problems generally arise because of the structure of Performance Management that is followed in companies. This is the cycle of Performance Management in a typical IT company.
A candidate once hired, goes through the on boarding process and at the end of the first month the manager sets the KRA (Key result Area) for the candidate according to which he is going to be assessed. From here on, the employee is on his/her own till there is a mid year review. Most of the times, the review isn’t favourable for the employee and usually ends up being the first wake up call (After 6 months!!!). The feedback from the manager doesn’t really help and the employee again is left looking for answers for the next six months. Then comes the final review, which as expected turns out be a nightmare for the employee and in worst case, the employee ends up losing the job.
This method of managing the performance is detrimental both for the employee and the company as a whole. The impact is huge in some cases. Some of the key pain points are mentioned below:
Lack of timely feedback results in employees wasting time and resources.
Lack of guidance leads to intellectual stagnation for employees and financial stagnation for the company.
Employees get demotivated when they are working hard without any output, which in turn is due to the lack of feedback.
It becomes almost impossible to address the short term challenges faced by the Employees.
Lack of immediate recognition and rewards for the employee doesn’t help either.
So what have we done at INNOVATION ROOTS to overcome these problems? Enter Lean Agile Performance Management (LAPM).
The LAPM Process at INNOVATION ROOTS (A.K.A. INNOROO) has high granularity. The performance and task management is highly Agile and involves planning and execution from day-to-day level to achieving the vision statement every year.
The LAPM is a continuous process where an Employee is expected to develop a plan, execute it while making sure he continuously assesses the progress and adapts to changing needs.
LAPM has a 360 degree feedback system where every employee is expected to perform a self assessment, also continuously getting feedback from peers, customers and the manager.
These are the advantages of the LAPM System:
Reciprocal Feedback – feedback both to and from the employee
Scope for continuous improvement
Focus on delivering value
Faster ROI
Early feedback cycle
Fair and consistent appraisal.
An organisation following the LAPM system will see the following improvements:
Capabilities Enhancement of the employee and organisation
Capacity Alignment resulting in better output
Incremental Growth
Increased Trust between the employee and the organisation
Improved Transparency.
Key Takeaways:
How Lean – Agile principles can be implemented to HR Process
How early feedbacks help to improve the quality of the deliverables
How the Organisational goals can be aligned to individual goals
How Management by Objectives helps to improves Organizational performance
Four Key terms to Plan and Execute.
In conclusion, The LAPM has huge advantages and benefits over the Traditional Performance Management System, that makes it highly effective. LAPM is a highly Agile system that makes sure Employees and the organisation make strong professional and intellectual strides that can be beneficial and lucrative for everyone.You can know more about INNOVATION ROOTS from our website.
