Performance Review
It wasn’t a big summit. It was after daily, two coffee cups by the pantry.
“Feels off this sprint,” I said.
Ramzi our lead engineer rubbed his eyes. “Priorities are hazy. Product wants one thing, design another, ops is yelling ‘urgent.’”
I asked “What do you need?”
“Clarity,” he said. A beat. “And I’m part of it. I jump into everything to keep quality high.”
“So that habit’s helped, fewer fires,” I said. “How’s it blocking you?”
“I don’t finish my own work. I don’t choose, I grab. I need to learn letting go.”
“Let’s start there. Would looping your PO help?”
He pinged the PO that afternoon. They wrote a one-pager: Top 3 for the sprint + Not-Now list. Posted it in the squad channel. Overnight, the air changed a bit.
Second check-in, two days later, he looked worse. “Ops is drowning me, pager, incidents, ‘quick help?’ pings. It’s nonstop.”
“Okay,” I said. “It sounds like other people in the team can help as well, Can we ask the team who’ll share the load?”
We floated it in stand-up. Three hands up. We sketched a buddy system on the whiteboard: two on, one back-up, one-week rotation. He didn’t love giving away the wheel. He did it anyway.
Third coffee, he showed me his calendar. “Noise is lower,” he said. “Still not quiet. But I shipped two PRs I’ve been sitting on.”
“What did you let go?”
“Two ‘quick review?’ DMs. I pointed to the buddy on duty and the Top 3 doc. Felt rude. Also felt… correct.”
We didn’t fix everything. But the ground stopped sliding.
What we changed (and kept)
Top-3 + Not-Now (got help from PO, and owned with PO).
Buddy system for ops. Two on, one back-up, weekly rotation handover
Flag rule. If anything slips >½ day: discuss in daily “what’s off / why / what help”
Two let-go slots per week. he try hand off 2 tasks; I ensure they land if he need help.
Performance review does not need to wait for the whole quarter, it can be short check-in & nudge.
And Sometime Performance review can go off track as well....
Practice Performance Review in Our LeadxLab .