A happy and healthy agile team can impact their ability to deliver high-quality software and meet customer needs. The question of course is how do you know if your team is happy? How do you keep on top of this and how can you track team happiness over time?
An agile team health check can be a simple tool that lets you pick the key dimensions (or criteria) of health that matters most to the organization. Spotify, Atlassain, Google are just some of the companies that share their health check models and help to popularize this concept.
Infi, una empresa de software holandesa, utilizó TeamRetro para dar forma a su propio modelo de control de salud utilizando una serie de dimensiones específicas para sus valores, cultura, objetivos de equipo y requisitos organizativos.
Basándose en este conjunto de criterios, este grupo de desarrolladores realizó inicialmente reuniones verbales en las que cada persona respondía a su modelo cada semana.
However, this can be hard to track efficiently so they went to the next level. Capturing this information with an agile team health check tool meant that they could capture that data quickly. Posteriormente, utilizaron la API de TeamRetro para crear su propia API que mostraba los datos de sus controles de salud en las pantallas de televisión de su oficina. This meant that the data was always visible and highlighted the organization’s commitment to supporting happy, productive teams.
Here, Software Developer Martijn Groeneveldt, shares their story… and their link to Github so you can try out the dashboard for yourself.
Why does your software development team use health checks?
Nuestro equipo realiza controles de salud porque somos una empresa que cree verdaderamente en el cuidado de sus empleados.
We believe that in the software development and consultancy business, human factors can make the difference between ‘okay’ and ‘awesome’. That’s why we run weekly check-ins. They are a good way to check whether there are things we can do, or do differently, so individuals are able to do their jobs to the best of their ability.
What health check dimensions did you use to measure team happiness?
Decidimos continuar con un modelo que utilizábamos para los registros verbales antes de empezar a usar TeamRetro.
Nuestro modelo de control de salud consta de los siguientes seis factores (traducido del holandés):
Stress
Do you experience stress or busyness in your life?
Divertida
Do you have fun in what you do?
Impacto
Do you have the feeling that you’re making an impact for the client or Infi?
Colleagues
How does the collaboration with colleagues and clients go?
Technology
Is the technology you are working with (still) fun and interesting?
Proceso
Are the processes that should make everything run smooth working as intended, or do they get in your way?
¿Cómo apoya TeamRetro sus controles de salud?
Al utilizar los controles de salud de TeamRetro para las reuniones semanales de equipo, los miembros del equipo responden sistemáticamente a las mismas consignas. This way they don’t accidentally forget or leave things out.
El uso de TeamRetro también permite que los miembros del equipo anoten sus pensamientos antes de la reunión semanal del equipo. We also can produce a nice statistics graph of all health checks done the previous periods.
We then display this on our screens so that our team can see it as needed.
(Example as shown – data is for illustrative purposes only and is not reflective of Infi)
What are the benefits of making your agile metrics visible?
Having the data visible means you also have the ability to make better decisions, reduce decision latency and ensure that any issues are addressed as soon as possible. This suggests that transparency is crucial to agile.
Whilst most teams can focus on the quantitative aspect of burn down charts, velocity points and error rates, having your team’s health check clear and upfront is a great way to put people in the picture too.
Con un agradecimiento especial a Martijn Groeneveldt, desarrollador de software en Infi, puede acceder a su código para el panel aquí: Panel de salud de TeamRetro.
Want to run your own health check? Here are a few models ready to go, or you can create your own.