I can relate to this a bit. Most here will quickly jump on the "Judge output and not effort" and dismiss the fact that judging output is very difficult, time consuming and often unfair.

If the task hasn't been done on time, it might be because the task underestimated the difficulty, or that the person had other tasks which interrupted this one. If the person tried their best and they are competent, the output doesn't matter so much since likely it would have taken an equal amount of time for anyone else to get it done. You can't ask people to do more than they are capable of.

When everyone is honest and trying their best there are no problems but its pretty hard to work out when they aren't.