Your Org Isn't a Tree. It's a Graph.
Understanding how work actually flows across teams, roles, and tools through Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) — and why it matters for building better companies.
Continuous Feedback
Feedback that moves as fast as your team
A lightweight way to share feedback continuously, not just during formal reviews.
The feedback system your team will actually use
Our chatbot Windy prompts for feedback based on who you’re actually working with and what you are working on - so it’s timely, relevant, and real.
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Windy
Windy
Today at 9:00 AM
Hey @Mark, I noticed you've been working with @Tim on the new design. How's that going? Is there anything Tim could be doing better?
6 replies
Mark
Just now
Tim is the 🐐
Windy
APP
Just now
Love to hear that Tim is the greatest! Do you have any specific examples I can pass along?
Mark
Just now
Yes his designs are just so good. He always thinks through all the edge cases and when I have feedback he is super quick to respond and update mocks. He also communicates great with the eng team.
Windy
APP
Just now
Super helpful! Since this is so positive I'd recommend you share it publically as a #shoutout
Mark
Just now
Sure do it!
Windy
APP
Just now
Awesome I'll post it in the #shoutouts channel.
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Personal growth every week, not just during reviews
Identify coaching moments when they happen, backed by real data - instead of waiting for a performance cycle.
Feedback Report - Sarah Chen
This is a feedback report generated by Windy based on continuous input from colleagues and manager over the past quarter. This was pulled from 1 employee and 2 integrations (Slack, GitHub).
🎯 Key Action Items (Focus Areas)
- ⏰ Time Management: Implement structured prioritization system1 to balance deep work with collaboration time.
- 📢 Communication: Share progress updates proactively2, especially when hitting roadblocks or timeline concerns.
- 🏗️ Technical Documentation: Create architectural decision records3 for major system changes to help team understanding.
- 🤝 Mentorship Expansion: Leverage strong technical leadership skills4 to guide more junior team members.
✨ Executive Summary
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What’s Going Exceptionally Well 🌟:
- 💡 Technical Excellence: Consistently delivers high-quality, scalable solutions that become foundational to our architecture5. Recent API refactor reduced response times by 40%6 and became the template for other services.
- 🔍 Problem-Solving Leadership: Naturally becomes the go-to person for complex technical challenges7, with a track record of solving critical production issues others couldn’t resolve.
- 📚 Knowledge Sharing: Proactively creates technical resources and leads learning sessions8 that elevate the entire team’s capabilities.
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Growth Opportunities 📈:
- ⏰ Workload Balance: Tendency to take on too many concurrent projects sometimes leads to delayed deliverables or last-minute rushes.
- 🗣️ Progress Visibility: Strong individual contributor but could improve at keeping stakeholders informed during longer development cycles.
- 📖 Documentation Practices: Creates excellent code but architectural decisions aren’t always documented for future team reference.
📝 Detailed Feedback Analysis
🌟 Exceptional Technical Leadership and Innovation
Sarah has established herself as the technical backbone of our backend systems. Her recent work on the user authentication service redesign not only solved our scaling issues but created a reusable pattern that three other teams have since adopted.
Mike Rodriguez, Engineering Manager noted: “When we had that critical production issue where user sessions were timing out randomly, Sarah didn’t just fix the immediate problem. She dug deep, identified a fundamental flaw in our session management approach, and rebuilt it in a way that’s actually more performant than what we had before. That’s the kind of thinking that makes her invaluable.”
Specific Technical Achievements:
- 🚀 API Performance Optimization: Reduced average response time from 240ms to 145ms9 across all endpoints
- 🔧 Database Migration Leadership: Successfully migrated 2.3TB of user data with zero downtime10
- 🛡️ Security Implementation: Designed and implemented OAuth 2.0 integration11 that passed enterprise security audit
- 📊 Monitoring Infrastructure: Built custom alerting system that reduced incident response time by 60%12
Alex Thompson, Senior Frontend Engineer highlighted her collaborative impact: “Sarah doesn’t just write great backend code—she thinks about how it affects the entire system. When she was building the new notification service, she actually came to the frontend team early to understand our needs and built the API exactly how we’d want to consume it. That kind of cross-team thinking is rare.”
🎓 Natural Mentor and Knowledge Multiplier
Sarah’s ability to elevate others through teaching and guidance has become one of her most valuable contributions to team culture and capability.
Emma Liu, Junior Backend Engineer shared her experience: “Sarah doesn’t just answer questions—she teaches you to think through problems. When I was struggling with the payment processing integration, she didn’t give me the solution. Instead, she sat with me for 30 minutes, asked me questions that helped me figure it out myself, and then explained why that approach was better than alternatives. I felt so much more confident after that.”
Knowledge Sharing Initiatives:
- 📚 Technical Learning Sessions: Led 8 “Backend Deep Dive” sessions attended by 15+ engineers
- 🎯 Code Review Excellence: Provides thorough, educational code reviews with 95% approval rating from recipients
- 🔧 Tool Development: Created internal debugging toolkit used by entire engineering team
- 📖 Wiki Contributions: Authored 12 technical guides that became team reference standards
David Kumar, DevOps Engineer emphasized her teaching approach: “Sarah has this gift for breaking down complex concepts. During our microservices architecture planning session, she drew diagrams and explained trade-offs in a way that got everyone aligned, from junior engineers to the VP. She doesn’t just know the technical stuff—she can communicate it.”
⏰ Opportunity: Balancing Deep Work with Project Management
While Sarah’s technical output is exceptional, her approach to project planning and communication could enhance her effectiveness even further.
Lisa Wang, Product Manager observed: “Sarah’s work is always excellent, but sometimes I don’t know where we stand until very close to deadlines. Last month, she was working on the search optimization feature, and I didn’t realize she’d hit a blocker with the indexing strategy until three days before our demo. If I’d known earlier, we could have adjusted scope or gotten additional resources.”
Time Management Challenges:
- 📅 Concurrent Projects: Currently leading 4 major initiatives simultaneously
- ⏱️ Estimation Accuracy: Project estimates often 20-30% under actual time needed
- 🔄 Context Switching: Frequent interruptions for production issues disrupt planned work
- 📢 Status Communication: Updates typically provided only when directly requested
James Park, Backend Engineer noted the pattern: “Sarah gets so focused on solving problems that she sometimes disappears into deep work for days. Her solutions are always brilliant, but as a team, we’d benefit from more regular check-ins about progress and any roadblocks she’s encountering.”
📚 Opportunity: Systematic Documentation Practices
Sarah’s architectural decisions and technical insights need better documentation to maximize their long-term value to the team.
Tom Anderson, Senior Engineer explained the impact: “Sarah redesigned our caching layer six months ago, and it’s been working perfectly. But when I needed to extend it last week, I had to spend hours reading through code and Slack messages to understand the design decisions. If we had proper documentation of why she chose Redis over Memcached, or how the invalidation strategy works, it would save the whole team time.”
Documentation Gaps:
- 🏗️ Architecture Decision Records: Major system changes lack written rationale
- 🔧 Setup Guides: Complex features missing implementation guides for other developers
- 🐛 Troubleshooting Resources: Knowledge of debugging techniques not captured in accessible format
- 📊 Performance Baselines: Optimization work lacks before/after metrics documentation
Rachel Stevens, Engineering Lead suggested: “Sarah’s technical judgment is excellent, but we’re missing out on the ‘why’ behind her decisions. Creating lightweight documentation—even just bullet points—would help other engineers learn from her thought process and maintain these systems effectively.”
🎯 Opportunity: Expanding Formal Mentorship Role
Given Sarah’s natural teaching ability and technical expertise, there’s significant opportunity to formalize her mentorship contributions.
Mike Rodriguez, Engineering Manager proposed: “Sarah is already mentoring people informally, and she’s excellent at it. I’d love to see her take on a more structured role—maybe leading our junior engineer onboarding program or being the official mentor for new backend hires. Her combination of technical depth and patience would be perfect for this.”
Mentorship Expansion Opportunities:
- 👥 Formal Mentor Assignment: Officially mentor 2-3 junior engineers
- 🎓 Training Program Development: Design technical curriculum for new hires
- 🏆 Technical Leadership Role: Lead cross-team technical initiatives
- 📈 Career Development: Guide other engineers’ technical growth paths
Ben Wilson, Junior Engineer expressed enthusiasm: “I learn more in a 15-minute conversation with Sarah than I do in hours of reading documentation. If she had more time dedicated to mentoring, I think our whole junior engineer program would level up significantly.”
💡 Recommendations and Development Plan
Immediate Focus Areas (Next 30 Days)
- 📅 Weekly Planning Ritual: Implement 30-minute Friday planning sessions to map upcoming week priorities
- 💬 Proactive Communication: Send brief weekly status updates to stakeholders on project progress
- 📝 Quick Documentation: Start creating simple architectural decision logs for major technical choices
- 👥 Structured Mentorship: Begin weekly 1:1s with one junior team member
Growth Initiatives (Next 90 Days)
- ⏰ Project Management Training: Attend workshop on technical project planning and estimation
- 📚 Documentation Standards: Develop team templates for technical documentation
- 🎯 Mentorship Program: Design and launch formal mentorship program for junior engineers
- 🗣️ Technical Communication: Practice presenting technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
Team Consensus: As Alex Thompson summarized: “Sarah is already one of our strongest technical contributors. With some focus on communication and documentation, she’ll become the complete package—someone who can not only solve any technical problem but also multiply the effectiveness of everyone around her. Her growth in these areas will have an outsized impact on our entire engineering organization.”
The science behind Windy's continuous feedback
Windy's continuous feedback is powered by ONA, which is a powerful way to understand collaboration patterns.
Find collaboration patterns from the apps your teams already use
Windy leverages existing collaborations data to understand whose working together, on what and reach out at the exact right time.
We used to get a trickle of feedback with Lattice—now it's a flood. Windmill helped us 10x the amount of feedback flowing through the company, and it's actually useful. Honest, fast, and tied to real work.
Avi Goren
CEO at Marqii
True 360° feedback
Windy uses Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to understand collaboration patterns and deliver feedback at the perfect moment.
1. Connect your tools
Windy integrates with Slack, GitHub, Jira, Zoom, and more to understand collaboration patterns.
2. AI identifies key collaborations
ONA spots meaningful collaborations and determines when feedback would be most valuable.
3. Smart prompts in Slack
Windy nudges the right people for feedback at the right time through natural Slack conversations.
4. Clean delivery & reports
Feedback is routed to employees and managers, grouped for 1:1s, and always accessible in reports.
Thread
Windy
Windy
Today at 9:00 AM
Hey @Erin, Saw you just closed a deal with @Tommy. How was it working with him?
5 replies
Erin
Just now
It was ok. The deal was awesome but Tommy could have been a bit more helpful.
Windy
APP
Just now
How do you mean? Do you have any specific examples I can pass along?
Erin
Just now
Sure. For example, during the kickoff call, he missed a couple of key client questions and I had to follow up separately.
Windy
APP
Just now
Thanks for sharing - do you have any specific advice for him?
Erin
Just now
I'd encourage him to take notes or record calls so he can better follow up and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
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Why annual reviews fail
Traditional feedback cycles are broken. People need insights when they can act on them, not months later.
Infrequent and delayed
Feedback comes months after the moment when context has been lost and it's too late to improve.
Manager-centric only
Missing real peer input and cross-functional insights that managers can't always see.
Low quality & vague
Generic praise or criticism without context—'good job' doesn't help anyone improve.
Hidden or forgotten
Valuable feedback gets lost in Slack threads, PR comments, or forgotten in meeting notes.
Actually continuous...
Frequently asked questions
How does Windmill access our information, and what integrations are supported?
Windmill connects to supported platforms (Slack, Google Workspace, Linear, GitHub, Notion, etc.) via secure integrations. Each integration is authorized by the customer. Available integrations are listed on the 'Integrations' page. For systems without direct API connections, Windmill can pick up inputs if such systems post to Slack or Google Docs. However, native integrations are preferred, and the team adds new ones at a rate of 2-3 per month. Custom integration requests are typically turned around in about two days.
How does Windmill handle continuous feedback, and how is feedback collected and reported?
Windmill uses a continuous feedback routine that identifies collaboration patterns (using organizational network analysis) and prompts people to give timely feedback to those they've recently worked with. Windy pulls out deeper feedback via follow-up questions, making the feedback actionable and context-specific. Managers can see all raw feedback and use it to inform reviews and ongoing development.
Can managers or admins set their own questions, goals, and feedback routines for their teams?
Yes, managers and company admins can fully customize routines according to their team's or organization's needs. Each routine generates a report with individual and summarized responses, complete with references back to the original input. Managers can also choose recipients, frequency, visibility and anonymity. The system is designed to let managers create workflows that match their management style and information needs.
Does Windmill support upward (employee-to-manager) and peer feedback?
Yes, Windmill's feedback routines can be set up for upward, downward, or peer feedback via the Pulse routine. Through the Continuous Feedback routine, Windy will also prompt relevant colleagues for feedback based on recent collaboration using business system signals.
Does Windy provide source attribution for the information in its reports—e.g., indicating whether it pulled insights from Jira, Slack, standups, etc.?
Yes, Windy includes footnoting in its reports and summaries, attributing material to its original source (Jira, Slack, standups, Linear, code contributions, etc.), so managers see exactly where the data comes from.
Is there a way to hide specific types of information from being included in reports or routines, such as keeping some data private from broader organizational summaries?
Yes, native permissioning from each integrated platform is respected. Additionally, there are privacy configurations at the routine level. For example, recaps or certain routines can be made visible only to managers, or you can configure feedback routines to be confidential or open, depending on your organizational preferences.
How do employees receive requests to evaluate their colleagues? What does the process look like?
Employees receive feedback/evaluation requests from Windy directly in Slack as conversational messages. Using organizational network analysis, Windy can to detect when colleagues have been working together, and will follow up via Slack for timely and constructive feedback.