How Do You Measure Team Performance?
The outcomes of measuring team performance pay off in quality, productivity and enhanced customer satisfaction.
A set of multi-dimensional measures must be used in order to evaluate team performance effectively to have a more encompassing picture. Experienced managers won’t need to carry out any formal process to know how their team is performing.
Factors to Assess When Measuring Team Performance
When measuring team performance it is useful to consider the following factors, which will be outlined in detail below:
- Decision-making and interaction
- Meeting goals at a sustainable pace
- Developing skills
- Delivering good economic value
According to Ken Rubin, there is one factor that must be avoided - Velocity (also known as pace). Velocity/pace is not a metric suitable for measuring team performance. It is more applicable for planning. There is an immediate disadvantage if team members are aware that velocity/pace is being used to measure their performance as team members could be tempted to cut corners to make sure deadlines are met.
Decision-Making and Interaction
- Within a high-performance team – all members contribute equally to developing ideas and therefore when it comes down to decision making – all team members will have a deep knowledge of why the decision has been made.
- Each associate will adopt the same behavioural and performance standards, set by themselves.
- During meetings there will be a positive focus, however, high-performance teams will not fail to address tough/negative issues that need to be acknowledged.
Meeting Goals at a Sustainable pace
- A clear indicator of excellent team performance is a team delivering high standard and valuable work almost always within the deadline whilst working at a sustainable pace.
- Teams that don’t work at a continuous and feasible rate will eventually reach burnout.
Developing Skills
- High-performance teams are continuously developing and expanding their set of skills. They will strategically work to maximise time effectively to learn important information and necessary competencies.
- Having a wide range of skills and nonstop development makes a team resilient in the workplace.
Delivering Good Economic Value
- High-performance teams produce results. Results such as customer satisfaction show that the team is delivering good economic value.
Summary
In summary, measuring team performance provides a team with information that demonstrates areas where there is room for improvement. Finally, this process must be complementary to a team’s development, not detrimental.
References
Rubin, K. (2012). Measuring Team Performance - Innolution. [online] Innolution.com. Available at: https://innolution.com/blog/team-performance-measures [Accessed 1 July, 2020].