Performance Management Platform

Part of the worlds-biggest-software-project initiative.

An open-source, AI-native platform for OKRs, 360 reviews, continuous feedback, and calibration — built to break the per-seat pricing lock-in of incumbent HR SaaS.

The Performance Management Platform gives HR teams, managers, and employees a single system for goal cascades, multi-rater feedback, performance reviews, and calibration. It is aimed at growing companies and mid-market organisations currently forced to choose between expensive proprietary SaaS (Lattice, 15Five, Betterworks) or unmanaged spreadsheets. AI assists managers with evidence-grounded review drafts and bias detection, with human oversight built in by design.

Why Performance Management Platform?

No credible open-source alternative exists in 2026 — the entire performance management category is proprietary SaaS, leaving teams without a transparent, self-hostable option.
Per-seat pricing scales painfully — a 500-person company pays roughly $84K–$132K per year for Lattice, and Betterworks requires a 500-employee minimum that excludes most of the market.
AI features in incumbents are opaque — closed-model review generation with no published bias-testing methodology creates legal exposure under the EU AI Act (which classifies employment-decision AI as "high-risk") and GDPR Article 22.
Mid-market is underserved — organisations below 500 employees needing real OKR cascade management have no sub-$5/ee/mo option with serious depth.
Frontline and deskless workers are an afterthought — the entire incumbent set is built around the knowledge-worker paradigm.

Key Features

Reviews and Continuous Feedback

Configurable performance review cycles (annual, semi-annual, quarterly, project-based) with customisable question banks and rating scales
Self-assessment, manager review, and multi-rater peer feedback forms
360-degree feedback collection with configurable anonymity thresholds enforced technically, not by policy
Continuous feedback module for praise, coaching notes, and development conversations between cycles
1-on-1 meeting agenda builder with shared notes and action item tracking

OKRs and Goal Management

Company-to-team-to-individual OKR cascade with progress check-ins
Visual alignment map showing how every team and individual goal connects to company objectives
Direct linkage between objective progress data and review forms so managers review outcomes, not impressions
Configurable check-in cadence (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly) per team

Calibration and Manager Tooling

Calibration workflow with rating distribution views across teams and departments
Statistical flagging of systematic rating inflation or deflation by manager
Manager dashboard consolidating direct reports' goal progress, pending reviews, and 1-on-1 agendas
Competency framework builder linked to role definitions and career progression paths

Integrations and Administration

HRIS roster sync with BambooHR, Workday, and Rippling at minimum
Slack and Microsoft Teams for nudges, feedback requests, and review deadline reminders
Role-based access control with distinct employee, manager, HR admin, and executive permission tiers
SOC 2 Type II certification path and GDPR data processing agreement

AI-Native Advantage

AI features are evidence-grounded and transparent rather than black-box. The platform drafts performance review narratives by synthesising OKR completion, peer feedback, 1-on-1 notes, and project outputs — cutting manager writing time substantially while reducing recency bias. A real-time bias-detection layer flags gender-coded language and attribution errors in peer feedback before submission, helping comply proactively with EU AI Act high-risk requirements. Automated OKR cascade validation identifies misaligned, duplicate, or conflicting objectives across teams, and predictive calibration assistance surfaces statistical anomalies and outlier managers to shorten calibration sessions.

Tech Stack & Deployment

The project is designed for both self-hosted and managed-cloud deployment, with the AI review-writing and bias-detection layer offered as a premium hosted tier. Architecture aligns with established frameworks (OKRs, Balanced Scorecard, SHRM 360-degree feedback guidelines) and targets compliance with SOC 2 Type II, GDPR (including Article 22 human-review requirements), the EU AI Act high-risk regime, and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility. HRIS integrations cover BambooHR, Workday, and Rippling; collaboration integrations cover Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Market Context

The performance appraisal and management software market is roughly USD $7.96B in 2025, growing to USD $9.03B in 2026 at a 13.4% CAGR (The Business Research Company), with the broader performance and goal management segment projected to reach USD $20.72B by 2035 at 17.1% CAGR (Business Research Insights). Incumbent pricing ranges from $4–$22/employee/month (Lattice $14–$22, 15Five up to $22, Leapsome $8–$12, Profit.co $9), with Lattice alone reporting $127M ARR at a $3B valuation. Primary buyers are HR managers and people ops leads at startups (30–150 employees), CHROs at mid-market (150–1,000), and heads of talent at enterprise (1,000+).

Project Status

MVP implemented — all ten user stories (US1–US10) are built and tested. The application lives under target/ as a Turborepo (NestJS API + Next.js web, PostgreSQL with row-level security + Redis).

126 API-side tests green: 110 integration (real Postgres/Redis via Testcontainers, RLS enforced), 9 unit, 7 AI-provider contract tests.
29/31 end-to-end scenarios green (Playwright + axe-core), zero serious/critical accessibility violations across all screens.
Deployable via WBSP (target/wbsp.yaml + target/wbsp-web.yaml) or a self-hosted Docker Compose stack (target/docker/docker-compose.yml).

Start here: user-docs/getting-started.md — a five-minute local demo, plus deployment, testing, commands, and the API reference.

The build followed a full Spec-Kit workflow; the governing spec, plan, and 127-task breakdown are in specs/001-performance-management-platform/.

Contributing

We welcome contributions from developers, domain experts, and potential users. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Important: All contributions must be your own original work or clearly attributed open-source material with a compatible licence. Copyright infringement and licence violations will not be tolerated and will result in immediate removal of the offending contribution. If you are unsure whether a piece of code, text, or other material is safe to contribute, open an issue and ask before submitting.

Licence

Licence to be determined. See discussion for context.

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