Lesson 7 of CTO Training Camp: Pitfalls in Performance Management and R&D Management of Technical Teams

[51CTO.com original article] When a technical team reaches a certain size, if there is no good management idea, the manager will easily be in a mess. A good technical team is not only reflected in the team cohesion, but also in the team's combat effectiveness and team growth. How to improve the team's combat effectiveness and growth is a very deep knowledge. Gome Online CTO Yu Binping believes that the technical team can also do performance management, and can well improve the team's efficiency and achieve business goals.

GOME Online CTO Yu Binping: How to manage performance of technical teams

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Yu Binping , CTO of Gome Online, has been with the founding team since 2010 to build Gome Online. He has experienced the process from "zero" to now one million orders per day, from only home appliances to now a comprehensive platform with all categories, finance, big data services, and cloud services, and from a technical team of 5 people to now nearly 1,000 people. More than 10 years of management experience of teams of more than 500 people. He has experienced almost all IT roles.

CTOs must first clarify their own mission objectives before they can assess others. The core goal of CTOs is the same as that of all executives: to achieve the company's goals. But how do we understand this? Mr. Yu Binping analyzed that first of all, we must be consistent with the company's goals. Achieving the company's goals is the primary task, followed by the corresponding technical goals and work plans; secondly, we must fully understand the business and be more familiar with the business than those who do the business. Basically, all technologies are for achieving business goals. Only by being fully familiar with the business can the value of technology be better exerted; the first thing to do is to promote business development. Supporting the normal development of the business is the basic goal. Innovation is carried out on the basis of the normal development of the business, and business development is promoted through technical means.

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Many people hold different opinions on whether technical teams need performance management. The opposing side believes that technical work is difficult to measure and performance appraisal may have a negative impact, while the affirmative side believes that having a good performance appraisal system can help managers improve management level and promote the optimization of management processes and business processes. The role of performance management for enterprises is self-evident. For enterprises, it can improve enterprise efficiency, reduce operating costs, improve customer experience, promote the development of technical business, and directly bring in revenue; it also has obvious effects on teams, such as improving team efficiency, collaboration and growth, and helping teams achieve goals faster; for individuals, it is also a way to motivate and enhance personal value.

Performance appraisal is often difficult to do. Often, leaders feel that their employees are not doing well, but the employees themselves feel that there is no problem. The fundamental problem here is that leaders and employees have different understandings of performance goals, and leaders are not clear about what causes performance goals. Performance management can help the team achieve its goals faster. If the team has no goals, even if each employee's performance meets the standards, the team's performance will still not improve. It is very difficult to measure technical performance appraisal. Technology is not sales, and work results are difficult to evaluate. At the same time, different job requirements are also different, and this requires considering whether the leader understands the work of each job. The process of performance management is far more important than the result. Performance is a measure of results rather than a measure of achieving goals. When problems are found, they must be corrected in a timely manner. Performance coaching is also essential. As a leader, you must help employees have a better understanding of performance in order to help them achieve better performance.

OKR is more suitable for the performance appraisal of the technical team. OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a simple and effective system for enterprise goal management, which can carry out goal management from top to bottom. OKR is a method to help all employees of the company maintain a consistent direction of effort, complete tasks more effectively and conduct appraisals. It is similar to KPI. However, there are also comparisons between KPI and OKR that show that neither OKR nor KPI is suitable for all positions. For positions that focus more on continuous income, rigid standards are needed to ensure the completion of indicators, and KPI will be more suitable than OKR.

Jiuzhilan Partner Fu Qiang: Avoid the pitfalls in R&D management

Many people have become leaders by stepping into pitfalls. Mr. Fu Qiang said with a smile: "How expensive a manager is depends mainly on the cost of the pitfalls he stepped into, whether it is 1 million US dollars or 1 million Japanese yen." Mr. Fu Qiang focused on the following four pitfalls that are easy to step into in R&D management, hoping that everyone can try to avoid these problems in R&D management.

Fu Qiang , 2006-2015: From engineer, architect, senior director to vice president of technology at Dangdang, he became the youngest VP in Dangdang's history and witnessed the ups and downs of China's e-commerce era. 2015: Partner of Jiuzhilan, providing one-stop online marketing software services for enterprises

Pitfall 1: Curiosity of algorithm engineers. Algorithm engineers all have a little princess who loves beauty in their hearts. They all have a heart for trying new things. New algorithms are always interesting, and algorithms recommended by peers are always good. Not only that, they will also be jealous. When they see their peers using a very good algorithm that looks very cool, they will become restless and anxious. They are like girls who love beauty. They think that what Internet celebrities recommend is good, regardless of whether it is suitable for them. Of course, algorithm engineers will not listen to the algorithms recommended by Internet celebrities. They will agree with the recommendations of their peers. Often, they will blindly follow the recommendations of their peers without doing a good job of evaluation or comparison, which will lead to bloody lessons. But this curiosity is understandable. Engineers also want to improve their capabilities through new algorithms. Moreover, the more complex the algorithm, the easier it will be recognized. If the leader recognizes it, the salary may increase. For managers, the occurrence of this phenomenon cannot be ignored, and it must be cut off as soon as possible. Separate "algorithm trials" from the gray area of ​​"development and self-testing" in R&D; broadly define it as: code changes that affect business results; introduce "algorithm trials" into formal R&D management processes; customize processes for "algorithm trials" and use processes to constrain results.

Pitfall 2: The new algorithm must be used until the end. Professor Fu Qiang used the example of "I have a hammer" to analyze, "I have a hammer, and there are nails everywhere; I got a hammer, and I want to find a nail to knock." Algorithm engineers see their peers' cool algorithms and use them. After getting started, they want to reconstruct all of them. Some even find that a new algorithm is not easy to use, so they use another new algorithm. "I have a hammer" is a very typical engineer's inertial thinking: engineers often look at new problems from the most familiar perspective, and often see solutions that seem to solve the problem at the earliest, and act too hastily. As a management position, you still have to grasp the details. The sooner you find a problem, the better, and find problems when listening to the plan report.

Pitfall 3: The gap between the beautiful ideal of reconstruction and the cruel reality. Everyone imagines reconstruction to be very beautiful. Through a reconstruction, not only can business personnel configure themselves and liberate development engineers, but also the style and readability of the code, the scalability of the architecture, and the advantages of low maintenance cost can be optimized at the same time. However, everyone did not see how regrettable the essence is. The probability of actually achieving the standard is very low. One part is the risk control of technical reconstruction, which leads to the incomplete project, and the other part is that expectations are too high during the reconstruction process. Before the project was established, the actual path to achieve it was not carefully considered, the resources were not carefully counted, the risk points and plans were not carefully estimated, and the key technology pre-research was not done solidly. Managers can appoint a product/development/architect role to grasp the overall situation, and they must also recognize the reality and reconstruct down to earth.

Pitfall 4: Having a pretty mouth is not beautiful at all. The so-called "pretty mouths" are mostly sunny, positive and extremely optimistic. Most people have the impression of engineers as rigorous, introverted, pragmatic and motivated, or as sultry programmers who need encouragement. At this time, if there is an engineer who not only pursues technical excellence, but also has a good grasp of the business and has the skills to deal with product managers and testers, he will become a candidate for leadership in the technical team. "Pretty mouths" are often better than ordinary young people in describing things. The expected effects of objective things are described more vividly and movingly, which greatly increases the expectations of others. Once the expectations are too high, the team will become arrogant. However, the fault is not in "pretty", but in the manager's ability to discern "pretty". Managers must have a clear understanding of the contribution of each employee. "Pretty mouths" cannot just talk beautifully, but must "do better than talk" to be a reserve army that is truly worth cultivating.

【CTO Training Camp】 is a subsidiary of 51CTO College Recruitment, which is aimed at mid- to high-end technical management talents. It provides technical and management learning as well as a network and resource platform. It aims to create an MBA for technical managers and supply more CTO talents to the industry. The course content of the third season of CTO Training Camp is designed with reference to CTO competencies and extended capabilities. It includes 4 major modules: technology and architecture, technology and management, business operations, and agile personal management. CTOs of first-line Internet platforms are hired as mentors. After completing the 12-day course, students will participate in the graduation ceremony, take minor credits, and complete the course.