I’ve seen a couple articles in various business magazines and the newspaper recently about properly aligning your reward system to properly motivate employees. Or more specifically, the actions which are measured are getting behavior to achieve the reward, not the one which the system is trying to achieve.
So how do you motivate testers, or more importantly, what measurements do you use to determine whether a reward is given? Here are some of the ones I’ve been inflicted with.
- Number of Bugs – This has all sorts of flaws, not the least of which is flooding the system with duplicate or way less than useful bugs
- Number of Bugs that make it to Production – There are all sorts of reasons why bugs don’t get caught — or released. Testers don’t have the final say on when a release should go, so this is out of their control
- Test Cases Executed – Not only does this not factor in things like Exploratory Testing, but also has no impact on the end quality
- Product shipped on-time – Again, testers don’t control when the ship happens. And if they did, they could skimp on depth of testing to make the date
None of those felt useful then, and certainly don’t now. What criterion do people use on their teams to measure tester success?
Reward systems outside school are always a bit dodgy. Anyone who is bright enough to code and test a product is probably smart enough to game whatever scheme you put in place. That’s why there has to be a person in the loop to discourage such activity. So numbers-based measurements can only ever be one input to a reward system.
In the end, sharing out the profits of the organization is what matters most (show me the money) with other rewards after that. I always liked the Ben and Jerry’s approach of that no-one makes more than 7 times the lowest-rewarded person in the organization. Beyond that, I wish I had more ideas for how to reward fairly.
~Matt
Ok, hope my previous comment fragment is lost in space instead of being submitted (it’s fat-finger Thursday).
I took your question to my metrics class last night and asked my instructor about it. His short answer is that you can’t really assess a tester based on a measurement which sounds like the conclusion you are drawing.
This is directed at the comment that Matt left.
Firstly I would hope that there is no set scheme for rewards, instead it should be an ever evolving system that caters to different individuals needs.
I would disagree that all people are looking for is the money. Yes monetary compensation is a powerful incentive, but it is also not one that can be given at all times (based on the fact that reviews are usually a yearly affair). Therefore how do you motivate your team day to day if all you offer is money? I have found through personal experience that if people have a feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction from their job the money almost becomes secondary, I feel the pay check matters the most when the job is liked the least.
To illustrate the power of different rewards I can provide you with an example. I came into work over a weekend to do some work that was not necessarily part of my job, and when I came in Monday I say an e-mail that had been sent by the VP of engineering to the whole department about the contribution that I had made. This simple alone e-mail kept me highly motivated to continue to work hard over the next week or two.
–Steve