One widely used approach to managerial appraisal is the system of evaluating managerial performance against the setting and accomplishing of verifiable objectives. Corporate performance management software plays a pivotal role in this regard. This is simple logic, since people cannot be expected to accomplish a task with effectiveness or efficiency unless they know what the end points of their efforts should be. Nor can any organized enterprise in business or elsewhere be expected to do so.

Once a program of managing by verifiable objectives is operating, appraisal is a fairly easy step. Supervisors determine how well managers set objectives and how well they have performed against them. In cases where appraisal by results has failed or been disillusioning, the principal reason is that managing by objectives was seen only as an appraisal technique. The system is not likely to work if used only for this purpose.

Management by objectives must be a way of managing, a way of planning and a key to organizing, staffing, leading and controlling. When this is the case, appraisal boils down to whether or not managers have established adequate but reasonably attainable objectives and how they have performed against them in a certain period.

There are other questions too, when using corporate performance management software. Were the goals adequate? Did they call for stretched (high but reasonable) performance? These questions can be answered only through the judgment and experience of a persons superior, although this judgment can become sharper with time and experience, and it may be even more objective if the superior can use the goals of other managers in similar positions for comparison.

In assessing the accomplishment of goals, the evaluator must take into account such considerations as whether the goals were reasonably attainable in the first place, whether factors beyond a persons control unduly helped or hindered in accomplishing goals, and what the reasons for the results were. The reviewer should also note whether an individual continued to operate against obsolete goals when situations changed and revised goals were called for.