Assessment
Assessment using the Develop Me model aims to provide a clear view as to where a person sits in regards to current levels.
It is not necessary to evaluate responsibility levels the exceed your current reach - with your reach being the next ‘broad’ level you can attain. This means that if you’re broadly level 4 then you shouldn’t even look at level 6 responsibilities yet.
Pre-assessment
It’s a good idea for both the staff member and assessor to individually go through the responsibilities and create a rough assessment of where you think they’re at in regards to level. Be honest when doing this, if you don’t know or are unsure whether a certain criteria is met then don’t provide a grade for it; similarly if you are on the fence about meeting the requirements for a certain level then it’s best to assume it isn’t met yet. Try to come up with evidence for your grading - especially for responsibilities where there is an element of uncertainty, or you believe there will be a difference of opinions.
It may be beneficial to start out with a broad overall scoring - eg: I believe the person should be broadly a level 4 - and use that number as a starting point for the assessment. In this way you’d begin assessing each responsibility from level 4, if they meet they requirement then maybe check level 5, otherwise look at level 3.
Evidence
When assessing someone against the Develop Me responsibilities it is essential to have open and honest conversations regarding what level you believe someone is; there’s zero benefit to anyone in inflating a score. To help you have these honest conversations it’s a good idea to be able to provide clear examples of when and how a Developer has met obligations or exceeded expectations - we’ll call these examples evidence.
We collect evidence in order to satisfy the following criteria:
- Developer should be making a conscious effort to realise the values associated with a responsibility. Accidentally fixing a bug does not make you a master bug fixer, and there is an expectation that a real conscious application of skills should be required in order to prove your ability
- They should also be comfortable fulfilling the responsibility, in terms of effort / time / resources, and be relatively at ease with the impacts involved. Developers will occasionally be required to step outside of their comfort zone and operate at a higher level; this does not necessarily prove they are ready to progress - though it can indicate potential - and if the work places noticeable strain on the Developer, or their duties, then they may not yet be ready to progress
- There needs to be continuous proof of the characteristics necessary to fulfil a responsibility. Repeated demonstration is necessary in order to be satisfied that responsibilities have been fully incorporated into the working role
- We also expect to see repeated consistent realisation of the responsibility, ensuring that the Developer can be relied on to perform the specific duties
- Finally we need to be satisfied that all of the above has been carried out in a competent way that aligns with Trade Me values and quality measures. We can be consistently and consciously bad at a task so we need to ensure that a responsibility is carried out in a way that is deemed acceptable within the scope of the role
We’ll call this criteria the 5 C’s (there are many differing 5 C models out there for differing purposes, including Medium’s Engineering Growth Framework from which this is stolen based).
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Complexity of work - Level 4
You work on a range of complex and routine tasks applying a methodical approach to resolving issues
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| Lesley has taken over support of the Plutonium Enrichment System and is responsible for ensuring continued operation within demanding SLAs | |
| Conscious | Has taken the time to get a deep understanding of the system, had read through the specs and done several deep dives through the codebase |
| Comfortable | Was able to remotely diagnose and resolve a recent P2 outage in the system and has been on hand to assist in various upgrade projects |
| Continuous | Has been involved in a number of 'war rooms' since March and frequently is called upon to give technical advice to other squads |
| Consistent | Is sought out by other groups to give technical advice and can be relied upon to be measured and thorough in responses |
| Competent | Has successfully resolved issues that other engineers have struggled to fix and is relied upon by others due to being able to resolve complex problems |
The assessment
You should both go through the model together and compare your individual assessments if you have them. If you both agree on a level scoring that’s great, it’ll save you time, and you can skip onto the responsibilities where you differ.
Where you do have differences in scores you should look to discuss where this difference comes from, and try to settle on an agreed outcome using evidence and the 5 C’s system.
Differences will arise for many reasons, and they do not necessarily reflect a negative view of a Developer’s skills. If you score lowly on a responsibility it may be because you’re not being given a fair opportunity to prove yourself at higher levels, or your assessor may not be fully aware of all the work you have been doing.
You should not look to do any assessments for responsibilities much beyond your average / broad level. If you’re mostly level 3 then you might be expected to have a few level 4 but seldom should there be any level 5s, and you wouldn’t look to assess anybody above their next broad level.