Disney's Performance Connection

The last couple days I’ve been thinking about and entering my personal Business and Developmental Objectives for the next 3 months. This is what Disney calls it’s Performance Connection . Basically every employee creates three Business and Development objectives for themselves. These should pertain to the individuals personal responsibilities and job descriptions. Each objective should engender an action with a specific focus, containing a quantity metric as well as a quality metric, and be time sensitive. All things I've discussed previously and wanted to accomplish with the Game-of-Work.

These objectives are then used during the employee review process to determine whether the individual is succeeding or failing at their job. Going through this process has helped me become super focused and I should have done this sooner.

Here’s an example of my business and development objectives:

BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

1. Develop a smooth, quick workflow for producing DGamer title integration builds, with a one day turn-around and improved third-party confidence, by the end of March 2009.
   
   
   • What tools can I use to improve the workflow?
     
     • Are there systems for asset submission?
     
     
     • Versioning for integration specification?
     
     
     • Can I create tests to prove asset integration success?
     
     
     • Are there currently any progress indicators for third-party integrators?
   
   
   • How will we measure the quality indicator, ie, improved third-party confidence? Perhaps a survey to get a measure of current confidence. Followed by a survey for improved confidence?
   
   
   • I believe this is realistic, but need to check with Jeff.
   
   


2. Improve DGamer code documentation by 50%, providing a clear picture of what's happening in the code, by the end of March 2009.
   
   
   • How should this be measured? Is there a continuous integration server I can setup to generate documentation and testing statistics per Perforce check-ins? Yes. Find the right integration server software.
   
   
   • Need to create some flow-charts to visualize the inner workings and cooperation of the different overlays.
   
   
   • Speak to Dan about the best place to set up a server for continuous integration.
   
   
   • Set up a FallLine local instance of the DxD server for testing and communications mapping.
   
   
   • I've already spoken with Joe about accomplishing this through Doxygen documentation. Get Jeff's buy-off.



3. Introduce at least three good ideas for improving DGamer functionality and user addiction by the end of March 2009.
   
   
   • Currently, from speaking to Mike and Jeff, it feels like DGamer is dying. I would think it should be thriving. From watching my tween daughter (age 12) and her friends playing games like Pony Island, Neo-Pets, Virtual Villagers and other role-playing games to the great success of the social-networking phenomenon, there should be a huge market space for DGamer to fill. Teenagers and young adults have MySpace. Adults have Facebook, Linked-In, etc. Tweeners and younger children have what?
   
   
   • Find out statistics on current DGamer usage.
   
   
   • Why isn't it used more? From my own experience, using the online DGamer Web site is a very slow experience. Can I help speed that up? Will I have access to the flash source when I am given access to the CVS repo for DxD? Am I over-stepping my bounds?
   
   
   • Interview my daughter and sons... what do they get out of DGamer? What do they want?

DEVELOPMENT OBJECTIVES

1. Improve my understanding of Disney's DS and Wii product lines, by playing at least 5 hours a week and recording observations of game play on my public blog weekly to be evaluated by the end of March 2009.
   
   
   • Need to create a schedule to ensure I meet the weekly game-play goal.
   
   
   • Need to create a reminder to ensure that I blog my play experience.
   
   
   • Solicit and review feedback from my weekly game play critiques.



2. Increase my knowledge of Disney's core DS software development platforms by reading all available documentation on DGamer, NOX engine and the official Nintendo DS SDK documents by the end of March 2009. I will spend at least one hour per day perusing these documents and record my progress on my public blog.
   
   
   • I should schedule a time of the day for accomplishing the one-hour-a-day goal.
   
   
   • Create a reminder daily for recording my thoughts on what I have read.
   
   
   • Make sure that I don't disclose confidential material in my public blog posts.
   
   
   • Evaluate the depth and breadth of documentation and create a reading schedule to ensure that a cover all documents by the end of the allotted period.



3. Building relationships with every co-workers at Fall Line and relevant third-party developers by introducing myself to one new individual each work day and getting to know, if only briefly, each person by the end of March 2009.

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I don’t know whether this performance system is a Disney specific internal software or whether they use an external ASP, but the specifics of the program are well described at About.com.