Comment by cdblades
2 years ago
This seems a lot like trying to invent a problem to justify your metrics rather than acknowledging that your metrics don't align with the actual performance of the team.
There's no indication in the article that the team was struggling or under-performing, and there's no reason to promote someone out of a position they're thriving in just because the way they deliver value doesn't neatly align with how you're measuring value, especially if you can plainly see the value.
Here's what I've seen in the past: exactly the scenario you described, the "Tim" is promoted to team lead or architect or something similar, and now their calendar is booked up and they no longer have time to do the thing that brings value (and that they enjoy). No one on the team is happy, everyone is stressed, and in a year or so you'll start bleeding members. Tim either hangs around and is a mediocre whatever position he is, or he leaves to be a whatever position somewhere else where he can start with a new context and without loaded expectations.
I agree that firing people based on delivered story points is probably wrong. I disagree that measuring the amount of story points someone delivers has no benefits. In this case, it surfaced a very interesting dynamic in a team that apparently the company wasn't aware of, and now that it is surfaced, it can align that team better to the goals of the company. I would really wonder, for instance, how Tim was evaluated on performance, if the expectations of him didn't align with the role he was doing.
I think the part in the article where a manager wanted to fire Tim because he delivered 0 story points, and the teamlead (?) refused, is made up for dramatic effect. I can't imagine any manager seeing those type of results and instead of asking the teamlead what's going on there, jumping to the conclusion that Tim should be fired.