Scrum Health Check

Help your Scrum team reflect on product ownership, collaboration, events, technical debt, and tooling to pinpoint where your agile practices are thriving and where they need attention.

Run in TeamRetro

Inspect and adapt the way your team runs Scrum

Scrum thrives when every part of the framework is working in harmony — from a well-groomed product backlog to focused events and sustainable delivery. This health check helps Scrum teams reflect honestly on how they are applying Scrum in practice, surfacing what is working well and where the framework is breaking down. By rating product ownership, teamwork, events, technical debt, and tooling, your team gains a shared, data-driven view of its agile maturity and a clear starting point for continuous improvement.

Dimensions

Scrum Practices

Assess the core pillars of how your team applies the Scrum framework day to day, from product ownership through to delivery and tooling.

  • Product Ownership

    Rate the current state of our product backlog, user stories, acceptance criteria, and relevance to the business.

    • Unclear backlog
    • Mostly defined
    • Clear and valuable

  • Team Work

    Rate the current state of our collaboration, communication, participation, and our ability to own the process and overcome impediments.

    • Working apart
    • Coming together
    • Fully aligned

  • Events

    Rate the cadence and effectiveness of our meetings including standups, planning, reviews, retrospectives, and refining.

    • Ineffective
    • Somewhat useful
    • Highly effective

  • Product and Technical Debt

    Rate our burn rate, the definition of done, the value of increments, and technical debt.

    • Unsustainable
    • Manageable
    • Healthy and sustainable

  • Tooling

    Rate our ability to use agile tools and to automate testing.

    • Manual and clunky
    • Partly automated
    • Streamlined

When to use this health check

  • When your Scrum team wants a regular pulse check on how well it is applying the framework.
  • Ahead of a retrospective, to focus the conversation on the areas that need the most attention.
  • When onboarding a new Scrum Master or Product Owner who wants a baseline of team health.
  • After significant changes to team composition, process, or tooling, to gauge the impact.
  • To track improvement over time by repeating the check each quarter or every few sprints.

Tips & tricks

  • Run the check anonymously to encourage candid responses about what is and isn't working.
  • Repeat it on a regular cadence so you can spot trends and measure improvement sprint over sprint.
  • Focus your follow-up actions on the one or two lowest-scoring dimensions rather than trying to fix everything at once.
  • Have the whole team — including the Product Owner and Scrum Master — participate for a fully shared picture.
  • Pair the results with your retrospective to turn insights directly into improvement actions.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Scrum Health Check?
It is a structured team assessment that helps Scrum teams rate how effectively they are applying the framework across areas like product ownership, teamwork, events, technical debt, and tooling, giving a shared view of agile maturity.
How often should we run a Scrum Health Check?
Many teams run it every quarter or every few sprints. A regular cadence makes it easy to track trends and measure whether your improvement actions are working.
Who should take part?
The whole Scrum team should participate, including developers, the Product Owner, and the Scrum Master, so the results reflect every perspective on team health.
How is it scored?
Each dimension is rated on a five-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Aggregated results highlight strengths and the areas most in need of attention.
How does this help our retrospectives?
The results pinpoint the dimensions where your team is struggling, giving your retrospective a focused, data-driven starting point for identifying and acting on improvements.