Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Team Reward Systems in Agile


"You Get What You Measure."


It's football season again, and as a long time player, it's my favorite time of the year. But this year is extra special for me, because my son is playing his first year. I was interested to see that his coach gave out helmet stickers as awards for doing well, but they were not allowed to put them on their helmets! For my son playing soccer, they each get a star if the team wins and extra stars for special on-field performance on defense and showing teamwork, but not for scoring goals. It all makes me think back to my last two years playing in high school, and how really true it is that "you get what you measure."

In those two years, we had two very different head coaches. My junior year, the head coach gave out helmet stickers for everything. If you scored a touchdown, you got a sticker. If you scored the extra point, you got a sticker. If you made the "hardest hit" of the week, you got a sticker. If the long snapper and holder didn't fumble any snaps during the game, they each got a sticker (but wait, wasn't that just their
job?). It went on and on and on. And as the season wore on, some helmets became just covered with stickers, while others were pretty bare.

My senior year, the new head coach (an assistant the previous year) changed all that. Nobody got any stickers unless we won the game. When we won, every player on the team got one sticker, period. The only other stickers were given out by the head coach: two or three each week, to seniors that exhibited effort above and beyond the call and served as examples for others to follow. It came the night before the game, along with a handwritten note from the coach about how great you were doing. It was very special to get one…I still have mine in a scrapbook.

The interesting point was that these two very different rewards systems, with essentially the same team, yielded two very different behavior systems. In the individual reward model, the game-within-the-game became how many stickers you had. It spawned individual focus, jealousy, backbiting, and hero behavior. All of these were counter to teamwork, pulling on the same end of the rope, etc. "I'm about to get tackled, but why should I pitch to my teammate? If I do, he might score and I want the glory myself." With the team reward system, it became about the team winning, not about individual accolades.

In Agile, we want to foster this same team-based cohesiveness. We want the team pulling together, looking for what they can do to make the iteration succeed. There should be no such thing within an Agile team as "I succeeded in my iteration, but you failed in yours." But especially here in the United States, we have built compensation models based on individual performance: reviews, raises, bonuses are all based on individual achievement. Cultural analysis also reveals this: in Geert Hofstede's Five-Dimension analysis of national cultures, the United States rates extremely high (91%) in orientation towards individual achievement. Certain European cultures show an affinity for group achievement, and Agile coaches working in Europe report it being much easier to foster a team-oriented mindset.

When your Agile team members are under individual reward models, those same issues I saw on our football team will show up. Hero developers can put the project at risk trying to crank out lines of code without communicating and coordinating, working on tasks that aren't visible to make powerful stakeholders happy. Struggling team members can hide their challenges, fearing being called out and losing out in their performance review rather than asking for help. Backbiting and jealousy among team members can cause them to avoid helping another team member to "save themselves" (watch the scene in Titanic when the ship first sinks). Team members will not have the spirit of chipping in to do whatever is needed to succeed, but instead you may see the "it's not my job" behavior. (If you're looking for behavior patterns we want in Agile team members, I wrote about that in my blog "Are Your Teams 'Wired for Agile?'").

Changing your rewards system to a team performance-based system will be an organizational challenge, and not one that can be handled at the team level. As an Agile champion in your organization, you should need to engage management and Human Resources to look at structuring a model that will foster the kind of team behavior we want. Here are some suggestions to consider:


  • Iteration Success Rates: Team members all receive the same bonus based on successful iteration completion rates. You might set a standard that if a team successfully completes X% of their iterations in a given timeframe, each team member gets a bonus.
  • Non-monetary compensation: When money is the only motivator, you will keep cohesion and loyalty only as long as the pay rate stays "high enough." But people are motivated by more than just money: consider offering paid training or conference attendance to advance desired skill sets, or free time, or team outings to increase camaraderie.
  • Team-based reviews: Reporting managers are likely not on the ground on a daily basis with their reports, when those reports are on an Agile team (in fact, it's a dysfunction if they are). As such, they aren't the best positioned to provide feedback from the trenches. But fellow team members are. Gathering feedback on every team member form every other team member can give managers a good, holistic view of how each person is contributing to team success. The large sample size can also help smooth out backbiting that can occur between team members that don't get along and may snipe each other in reviews.
  • Team-awarded "MVP" Awards: Much as my senior football coach did, award exemplary performance awards to team members that go above and beyond the call. But instead of the manager deciding who gets these, have that decision solely in the hands of the team. Being voted an award by your peers will often mean a lot more than by a committee or manager.
These are but a few steps you can take to foster team cohesion and a teamwork mindset. Just remember to stay away from tons of helmet stickers.

As always, I welcome your comments.