Our planned distribution of work seemed fair, but in practice, the actual workload burdens saw a significant mismatch with the intended distribution. There ended up being a number of times in which other team members would have to dedicate additional time to covering missing parts that weren’t initially assigned to them. I think one thing I would have liked to change was to develop a more systematic approach to communication – maybe with more frequent check-ins with our group as a whole to make sure that all our team members are on the same page. Many issues with our group came about as a result of lack of communication or miscommunications, where we would not be on the same page or have the same mental model of our intended solution. For myself, I think that I could have been more proactive about ensuring that the team was working cohesively rather than sitting back and hoping people would pull their weight. Next time I will also look to avoid planning out long stretches of time where team members are asked to work on large sections individually, as it was the source of a number of issues. Finally, I think my overall communication from my own end for workload bandwidth and scheduling was very clear and I would like to continue doing that moving forward.
After reading the case study, I do think that I might’ve been a little harsh on one of my teammates – while I still think they have much to improve on, I could have done a better job of addressing which things they did not understand or where they might have been stuck on to improve their contributions to the group. I personally think that in the example they brought up in the case study, I would have given him the rating he asked for – it is clear to me, at least, that his performance is due to things that are largely out of his control, as it seems to be a result of hiring issues that aren’t his responsibility. He seems to otherwise be a very capable worker and I think giving him a poor rating would not accurately reflect his abilities overall. Communicating to him that his work is not up to par and helping him figure out ways to improve his situation would be enough, and if does not follow up on those, then I think a poor rating would be warranted in the next cycle.
