Bonus Evaluations

The final system is arguably the most controversial, but accurately mimics systems in some companies. In many companies, salaries are "low", while a good portion of compensation is in yearly bonuses and/or commission. These are used to reward results and encourage improvement. In Design Studio, the PMs would be given a set amount of bonus money points. These points would be distributed to teams and team members based on achievement and improvement. PMs would need to defend these choices to the other PMs saying why their team deserves more points. It would essentially put the Design Studio grading on a sort of curve. The PM could choose to give each team member a "B", or (more likely) set distinct grades.
This would require extensive PM communication and rely on their ability to accurately justify their teams' progress and results. They would also need to know each team member and their activities very well, more than in the current system. This would still require them to evaluate their team, but on their own terms. (perhaps with a previous method?)
Pros:

• Competitiveness between teams can yield greater results.
• Forces PMs to be actively involved to properly evaluate teams.
• PMs get to defend value of their decisions.

Cons:

• Competitiveness between teams can easily become negative.
• Team grading is truly at the discretion of their PM, there is very little standardization.
• Results may take precedence over learning and goals.

This would work with a set of identical PMs and a purely positive competition between the teams. Unfortunately, students always question grading and would even more so if people (Lutz) broke the curve.

Big thanks to Nate for writing the majority (all) of this post. Please forgive me for being a day late in our post-a-day series about Design Studio evaluations. Please post any final comments below.