"Manging at Microsoft" - A conversation with Microsoft Program Manager David Anderson

Nice method to move (push) the team to move forward,
to appreciate how the information is spread.

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SD: You've said before that developers shouldn't be measured individually. Why not? And how then does a manager recognize and reward the star players on a team?

DA: I'm not a believer in measuring individuals by their code production. Developing software is a team sport; it requires interaction and mutual support across the team. It's knowledge work and is best done in an environment of knowledge sharing. When you reward people for individual effort relative to their peers, you encourage them to hoard knowledge rather than share it. The manager should be measured by the productivity of the team, not the individual team members for their individual efforts. It's a system -- optimize for the system, not for the parts.

My style is to reward individuals for secondary contributions. I use the "language lawyer" concept from Fred Brooks (author of The Mythical Man Month). For example, I ask a team member to become our "lawyer," or expert, on unit testing and test-driven development, and I measure them by how much they learn and by how well they diffuse that knowledge across the rest of the team. I reward people to learn and share. It's behavior compatible with team success.