Recently, I had to prepare the materials for the year-end report, and I finally held back a lot of hair. The whole process was actually quite painful, because I felt that the usual summary review was not enough, and there was also a lack of understanding of the business itself. However, review the material that arranges to write out or feel harvest is full, among them feeling (routine) also give everybody chatter.

01

A conclusion is not just a conclusion

When it comes to the summary, people always think that it is a review of the past year and something to look forward to the future. It is true, but in fact, the content to be written in the summary has already been written for a long time.

The summary is not an independent event, but the conclusion of a series of actions over the past year, including: Technical/industry research – Technical planning – Goal setting OKR- Plan splitting – Project management – Project review – year-end review.

It can be seen that the year-end summary starts from the research on technology and industry at the beginning of the year, and the plans and goals set for the whole year. Therefore, referring to the plans and goals set at the beginning of the year, it is necessary to review the completion of each goal, explain the implementation process, problems encountered, and whether expectations have been met.

Therefore, the first feeling is that the summary is the last link in a series of standardized actions throughout the year, which needs to be taken care of before and after, linked together.

The summary is an opportunity for self-reflection

The purpose of the summary is to reflect on the process of the recovery, zeng Guofan “three daily reflection of my body” and become a saint. Year-end review is a good time to review the whole year, whether the goals of the beginning of the year have been achieved, what has been gained, what are the difficulties, and what are the new ideas about business, technology and team cognition.

I believe many people have seen this formula, if you can make yourself a little bit better every day than yesterday, the final progress is huge.

Therefore, the second feeling is: sum up the things that should be done every day, every week, every month.

Writing a summary to your boss is also for yourself

The review should be read first by the boss, or, if it’s a group presentation, by peers. Getting to know your audience is a key step in writing a good summary, because different people see things differently and expect different information.

Technical students, for example, tend to emphasize the technical output, but ignore the business output, especially can not clearly explain the technical efforts for business development. At the same time, technical students should also be sensitive to the key data of business development and know how to make reasonable technical planning in different stages of business development.

Radario’s “Principles” mentions his lifelong pursuits: meaningful relationships and meaningful work. Therefore, collective reporting is the best way to achieve this. Ideally, you’ll be able to build trust with the people you work with, become life friends, build relationships and do meaningful work together.

At the heart of this is extreme truth-seeking and extreme transparency.

Therefore, the third feeling is: the content of the summary should dare to speak the truth, to say bad things, dare to face the bleak reality.

02

What should be included in the annual review? Here I will give you a general template (software oriented) that you can adapt to your own situation.

Basic Team Information

This section is about basic information about the team and understanding of the business. It includes department information, division of labor of the team, position of oneself, who are the upstream and downstream people associated, responsible business, key indicators of business and technology, etc

Basic functional cognition

To understand the current position or industry, it is necessary to benchmark industry best practices, understand competing technologies and organizational capabilities, find gaps and find corresponding countermeasures.

This part tests daily accumulation, sensitivity to new technology, understanding of industry trends and so on. Learn more about Thoughtworks’ radar, Gartner’s technology maturity curve, and industry technology summits such as QCon and GMTC. Of course, it is also very helpful to pay attention to the public number of dad code farmers.

Refer to my previous articles on big front-end technology trends and big factory practices:

Half way through 2019, have you got all these big front-end technologies? – ok,

Half way through 2019, have you got all these big front-end technologies? – the next

Decryption of domestic BAT and other large factory front-end technology system – the end

A year’s worth of resets

Referring to the OKR set at the beginning of the year and reviewing the completion of each item, it is better to adopt STAR rule when reviewing each item:

• Situation: The background of a project
• Task: Set goals, challenges, and difficulties
• Action: Specific implementation steps, how to achieve each milestone, the key points, difficulties and highlights
• Result: the Result of the project, whether the target has been achieved, the quantifiable data have been summarized, and whether the project duration and manpower input have reached the expectation

In a year’s review, in addition to the review of past project results, the overall technical planning strategy needs to be reviewed. We can discuss the changes of business in this year, the corresponding planning made by technology in combination with the changes of business, whether there are changes in the middle, whether the expected effect is achieved, and whether there is a better choice if we can do it again.

Team development

In the role of team leader, you can also review the competence of the team you are in charge of

• Team organization division: how to carry out division of labor, how to cooperate, manpower distribution
• Cultivation of core students: how to develop the cultivation plan, how to implement it, and what are the results
• Promotion: How did the team members grow during the year, and how did they get promoted
• Team influence: whether technical sharing, articles, etc., has an external influence

Personal cognitive improvement

Through training, study, reading, have you gained any new knowledge, developed new habits, learned new skills, and have you made any additional plans to learn new things in the coming year?

In this part, I have also summarized the harvest of personal growth in 2019: my 2019

Plans for the coming year

Finally, when looking forward to the coming year, I will make reasonable technical planning based on business development, industry trend and technology trend, and make goals, milestones and project plans through OKR. In the New Year, I can roll up my sleeves again

I have written about technical planning and THE formulation of OKR before. If you are interested, please read the following article:

Do you really understand OKR? Here is a complete practice methodology

How do programmers make technical plans?

03

Every time at the end of the year, it is time to take out last year’s goals and then when this year’s goals, the flag that was set now looks red on both sides.

The year-end summary is a time to face the bleak reality, summarize and review, and look into the future. You will be the brightest person in the year