Identifying Criteria for Continuous Evaluation of Software Engineers for Reward and Recognition: An Exploratory Research

Reward and Recognition (R&R) should be given to employees in a timely manner, based on continuous evaluation of their performance. Success of an R&R process lies in clear and well defined criteria for continuous evaluation of employee performance. Often such criteria are decided by the organization with no input from the employees. The purpose of this paper is to use qualitative research methods to explore and identify the criteria to be used for continuous employee performance evaluation for R&R in Information Technology organizations, from the perspectives of software engineers (SEs) and project managers (PMs). Exploratory research was conducted in two phases. In Phase I, unstructured interviews are used to elicit information from 7 SEs. Caselets are prepared based on these interviews and 19 criteria are identified. In Phase II, the criteria identified in Phase I are confirmed using content analysis of semi-structured interviews, conducted on relatively larger group of SEs (in stage 1) and PMs (in stage 2). Additionally, 12 criteria are also identified in Phase II. Collectively 31 criteria are identified. The proposed criteria set is expected to comprehensively cover the SE performance on a continuous basis in various dimensions to award R&R.