Performance Management through KRA’s

People need to know what is expected out of them. Expectations from them are usually communicated verbally in one to one meetings or team meetings. However, as soon as they are back their day to day activities these expectations loose visibility. It helps to document performance expectations or Key Result Areas (KRA).

My first introduction to KRA’s was some 8 years back when I was a software tutor. We were given KRA’s in the beginning of our term. We had to align our day to day activities according to those KRA’s. Documented result areas provided us a path to tread. We knew what exactly is expected out of us and we performed accordingly. KRA's deal with results and not with day to day activities and hence more quantitative the KRA's are the easier they are to track.

Here is the process I prefer to use.

– Talk to individual team members, gather information
– Identify their day to day activities and hence derive key result areas
– Document them and allocate a timeline (could be a very small document)
– Communicate KRA’s to the team members
– Revisit progress of an individual on these KRA’s periodically
– Critically review performance against each of these KRA periodically
– Facilitate them in case of deviations
– Observe, measure, discuss and appraise

KRA’s help individuals align their day to day activities to overall organizational/project goals in terms of results delivered. 

Any useful experiences on KRA’s that you’d like to share ?