Why does a monthly review matter?
A monthly review matters because it is where the management decisions about a Digital FTE get made: whether its targets are right, whether its remit needs changing, and whether it has earned more autonomy or needs less. Without the review, those decisions happen ad hoc or not at all, and the FTE either stalls at Level 0 or drifts.
It also matters because the FTE writes its own review, honestly, and someone should read it. The Performance tab on ftes.ai contains a first-person monthly report stating what was delivered, what was missed, what is unmeasured, and what the FTE recommends.
What do you read first?
Read the FTE's own report first, in full. It is short by design and it is honest by design: misses are stated with reasons, unmeasured items are labelled, and recommendations are specific. Note anything that surprises you, because surprises are what the rest of the review investigates.
Then open the Targets tab and check each target's status against its evidence, not against the report's summary. The report should match the evidence; if it does not, that is the first finding.
What do the send-back reasons tell you?
The send-back reasons tell you where the FTE and the team disagree, and why. Read every send-back for the month, grouped by category. A category with repeated send-backs for the same reason is a remit that needs a rule, a knowledge source that needs correcting, or a target that was wrong. A category with no send-backs over a long run is a candidate for promotion on the ladder.
This is the most valuable ten minutes of the review. The approval rate is the number; the reasons are the meaning.
- Repeated reason, one category: fix the remit or the source
- Scattered reasons: usually fine, note and move on
- No send-backs, long run: candidate for autonomy promotion
- New send-backs in a promoted class: step it back, find the cause
What do usage and cost tell you?
Usage per role and cost per outcome tell you whether the FTE is getting more efficient. Tokens divided by outcomes from Targets, compared with last month, should be flat or falling as the remit settles and routine classes earn autonomy. A rising cost with flat outcomes points to a model tier set too high for the task mix, or a remit that has the FTE doing more than it should.
Check spend against budget for the month too, and any external spend the role controls. The morning brief showed it daily; the review is where the month is judged.
What do you decide and record?
Decide three things. Are the targets right, or should any be changed, added, or dropped, including FTE-suggested additions waiting for approval. Does the remit need changing, from the send-back patterns. Should any class of action move on the autonomy ladder, up from a long clean run or down from a new send-back.
Record the three decisions with the date and the evidence they rest on. Over a year, that record is the history of how the delegation matured, and it is what a successor manager reads first. Thirty minutes a month is the cost; a well-managed direct report is the return.
What does the written record of the review look like?
The written record of the review is a short note kept with the Digital FTE's monthly report, with the date and the manager's name. It restates the three decisions and the evidence for each: targets kept, changed, added, or dropped, with the FTE-suggested additions accepted or declined and why; remit changes, each traced to the send-back reason pattern that prompted it; and autonomy changes, each naming the class, the direction, and the length of the clean record or the send-back that justified it.
It also records anything the review found that is not the FTE's to fix: a knowledge source that was wrong, a connection that needs narrowing, a target the business no longer wants. Twelve such notes make a year's history of the delegation, readable in twenty minutes by a successor manager, and they are the evidence an audit or a governance review reads alongside the audit trail. The review takes thirty minutes; the note takes five, and it is the five that make the thirty count.