How to do self-appraisal using Google Forms

Self appraisal is nothing but an evaluation of employee himself – It gives the fundamental feedback / views and points regarding his performance in given period of time at work. It analyses the strengths, weaknesses, accomplishments, problems faced, training and development needs for every member in team. The self appraisal document is normally a simple excel sheet.

Google Forms is an excellent alternative for static Excel sheets – mainly for this kind of processes. You can create a Form and share it with multiple members without any duplicate efforts.

We used Google forms in a small size organization – for 150 members. It gave us interesting results effort wise. We finished the self appraisal process in 2 days using this. We used the following sections for self rating (1 to 5) simply and added a notes section at the end of it for comments.

• Satisfaction in current responsibilities held by the employee


• Clarity in Goals for the next appraisal period


• Accomplishments score


• Training need for his current role


• Support from his Manager for challenges in Work


• Leadership skills Score


• Inter-personal and communication skills

Steps to create Google Forms

1. Click on ‘Form’ in ‘Create New’ Menu – from the home page of Google Docs.


2. You can edit the title, add description, add Question Titles, Question Types (basically answer type –               Text, paragraph, multiple choice, check boxes, scale, grid etc)


3. You can even select themes for colorful forms.


4. After all your create Form processes – you can publish it in email to your team


5. You can see responses in Summery or Spread sheet mode

Try it, and give me your feedbacks. If you need any help in doing it first time – just ping me.

Professional communications

Now days, the Indian economy is getting better after the big bad recession times. It is good for everyone to get into business. Everything goes fine in many small and medium size organizations – but I feel adding little more values in good communication makes most of the work flow, and performance even better. I would like to share few suggestions here about building a good communication for small and medium size business clients’ management.

1. A simple communication plan should contain following information

a. Stakeholder Information – I prefer to have names, email IDs and phone numbers

b. The objectives, schedules and mode of communication – what information will be communicated in what schedules. For example: Weekly Status Calls, Status Reports, monthly reports, Issues and risks discussions, etc.

2. Use your minutes of meeting document

a. Have a clear agenda – this saves times in meetings

b. Summary of Discussions – important comments from stakeholders

c. Action Items and Status monitoring

d. Have an action Item log for continuous follow ups and results

3. Weekly Status Report

a. I prefer to have content from Project plan here.

b. What is completed, what is re-scheduled and what is not completed / not started should be informed. Not started and not completed should be rescheduled and communicated.

c. Achieved milestones should be mentioned

d. Issues, Risks and concerns should be notified

e. Important decisions made by stakeholders should be added in every week status report

4. Customer Calls – Conference calls, Mobile Calls

a. I suggest to take calls as much as possible from inside closed room – this gives chances to listen clear and white board important points

b. Listen carefully – most of client communications will not be clear enough – sometimes, language, sometimes their way of presentations and sometimes because of their understanding of situations. [This is based on my personal experience J]

c. Talk loud and clear – Don’t talk fast – be slow, and if required get confirmations for his understanding

d. Record your call – if possible.

e. Circulate Minutes of Meeting as early as possible after the call

Note: Re-post from SiliconIndia Blog

6 Microsoft Office Live Workspace Services for Better Project Management

Every project - regardless of its complexity and budget, requires lots of planning, organization, co-ordination and communication between members. In early days we used MS-Excel for scheduling and tracking tasks and member activities, after few years - it moved to MS-Project standalone and MS-project server editions. Now days, there are many small and medium size organizations, working into Web 2.0 and Mobile Development projects and their investment is less – practically the implementation of project management server is becoming a costly thing. But they have requirements to plan, organize and share contents with stakeholders. Microsoft Office Live workspace helps here with lots of useful services – all for FREE.

1. Visit here [http://workspace.officelive.com/en-GB/ ] and use your Office Live ID or MSN ID to log-in. Don’t have an ID – No problem. Create a new ID for FREE.

2. Free Web Space to Store and Share Documents – It is good to store and share your SRS Documents, Bug Reports, Log Files, Specification documents in one place. Microsoft Office Live Workspace helps you with 5 GB space. You can Store your documents, Sheets, scripts and Presentations and share them with access limitations – if required. You can also use this space to deploy your content to clients – Just like an FTP.

3. There are many free Pre-built template Web-spaces available for quick start. You can choose from one of them and start working on documents. For every new project I suggest to have separate Workspaces.

4. You can create Small Notes, Lists, Tasks Lists, Contact Lists, Event Lists
a. Small Notes – helps you for quick information storage – I suggest this for instructions management – for example: Release notes, Updates in current build etc.
b. Lists – General list – it can be books list for reference, web links, or sample data for testing etc.
c. Tasks List – Create a simple Work Breakdown Structure of Tasks and set priority with due dates. You can share this with your tea m and stakeholders. It helps to give better visibility of planned works to everyone.
d. Contact List – Store Phone numbers, Email IDs and share them for quick reference.
e. Event List – Schedules of your releases, builds, holidays, milestones etc.

5. You can also store, edit and share familiar MS word, MS Excel and MS Power-point files.

6. For Quick communications – use comments pane. Add comments and it is visible to everyone. Use this for instructions, quick requests etc.

7. You can use “Add Documents” for uploading files from your Desktop. It can be shared via a centralized workspace.

I hope this will help many project leaders to handle their projects and deliver things efficiently.