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Currently at my company three people take part in the annual performance evaluation of a software developer:

  • the developer,
  • product owner from the scrum team of the developer,
  • head of software development (line manager).

There isn't any 360-degree review system. Additionally, scrum masters usually are asked for written feedback of devs as an input for performance evaluation.

As far as I see in the Scrum Guide, PO, SM and devs are part of the scrum team and:

Within a Scrum Team, there are no sub-teams or hierarchies.

Does giving this reviewer role to PO and/or SM contradict this? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this performance evaluation scheme? As a scrum master is there anything I should do about this?

p3m5
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    Scrum is a methodology for developing software, not necessarily for career development (in fact, [a famous question here provides arguments that it in fact hinders career development](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/410482/how-do-i-prevent-scrum-from-turning-great-developers-into-average-developers)). Don't try and force everything into Scrum. – Philip Kendall Jun 07 '22 at 16:04
  • Just stop measuring the dev's performance. Devs are persons, living beings, not car engines you can compare their horsepower or velocity. Stop approaching software development as if it was any other industry of the 2nd sector. Work on people's motivations, set goals and incentives so they can develop the feeling of "growing as professionals". Otherwise, you will end up with a bunch of mercs. – Laiv Apr 20 '23 at 11:08
  • @Laiv Setting goals is still a form of metric, just a fuzzy binary one. Likewise what do you see 'setting incentives' to mean in practice other than some form of tying an action to consequences in some norminal concept of 'performance' by an entity. – user1937198 Apr 21 '23 at 14:30

1 Answers1

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A scrum master is a “servant leader”. They are not a manager. Letting them take on managerial duties erodes trust and corrupts the role.

A scrum masters duties include facilitating meetings, ensuring scrum processes are followed, and removing blockers. Evaluating performance is not one of them. Nor should it be.

Within a Scrum Team, there are no sub-teams or hierarchies.

This is correct. Management shouldn’t prefer one team members feed back over any other.

If you want a scrum team to be self organizing then stop organizing it.

But, as the scrum master you’re the expert on doing scrum correctly. You have a duty to uphold the ideals. Don’t just give them lip service. Find an effective way to stop this before it harms your team.

candied_orange
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  • Are you advocating eliminating individual salary adjustments? If so what would you replace them with? Increase salaries equally? Let the team divide a budget among themselves, or tie to a team level metric? – user1937198 Apr 21 '23 at 14:34
  • @user1937198 What? No. Individual salary adjustments are managements job. No one on the team is a manager. This is by design. Make management do their job. You might as well have the janitor write performance reviews. – candied_orange Apr 21 '23 at 14:42
  • So how does a manager assess the performance, without setting up incentives which conflict with the teams self-organisation? – user1937198 Apr 21 '23 at 16:20
  • By not pretending to be part of the team. Be the manager. How is not something scrum speaks to. – candied_orange Apr 21 '23 at 16:34