Performance Goal Tracking Using Trello

Most organizations have yearly performance evaluations. There is some variation, but usually you set a handful of goals for yourself and then you’re evaluated against them at the end of the year. There might be a check-in halfway through the year, and the goals might have to be aligned under certain pillars. Usually you set 5–8 goals, and maybe some are personal.

I have always found one of the biggest challenges to performance goals is that they get set and then rarely reviewed until a couple days before performance reviews. Maybe you keep them in the back of your mind, and look at them every so often, but there’s usually the job you do and then your goals and they don’t always align in a nice way. But if you are truly to be measured by those goals you set, shouldn’t you be more cognizant of them?

Enter Trello

Trello is super-awesome and there’s no end to what you can use it for. I’ve found it to be really helpful as a performance goal tracking system. Here’s how it works (using my 2016 performance goals!):

Each Goal is a List

Each goal becomes a Trello list. Name the list some quick title for your goal. It doesn’t need to be the full goal — we’ll put that text in a card.

The top card is your goal. Put the full-text of your goal into that card’s description.

Every month, add a card

At the beginning of each month, add a card for that month. Every so often during the month, pop into that card and put a quick description of where you’re at. At the end of the month, wrap it all up and give a summary of what happened. And then create a new card for the next month. And so on.

What you end up with is a narrative of how you progressed on the goal through the year. If goals are due in July, you should have an August, September, October, November . . . June card. When time comes for your performance review, you can easily look back and see how you progressed.

Labels tell the story

Now here’s where I feel the best value is — labels. Think of labels as a way to depict your status over time. Remember each of those monthly cards? When you wrap up each month, assign a colored label to that month based on where you are in your goal’s progress. I’ve gone with four tiers, but you may want to use more or less.

Now, make the goal card’s color the most recent label. At a glance, you (or someone else) can see where you’re at on your goals, and where you should place your efforts. AND you get to see how you’ve performed over time on that goal. In my goal above, I slowly got behind, and then REALLY behind, and I’m pulling out of that spin.