How healthy is your squad?
Inspired by the model Spotify popularised, the Squad Health Check gives agile teams a fast, honest way to gauge how they feel across the dimensions that matter most to delivery and morale. Squads rate everything from delivering value and codebase health to fun, learning, and teamwork, sparking the conversations that turn quiet frustrations into shared improvements. Run it regularly to track trends over time, surface where a squad needs support, and help leaders see patterns across multiple teams without losing the nuance of each one.
Dimensions
Squad Health
The core dimensions of squad health, spanning what the team delivers, how it works, and how it feels to be part of the squad.
Delivering Value
How proud the squad is of what it delivers and how happy stakeholders are with the results.
- We deliver crap and feel ashamed
- Mixed results
- We deliver great stuff we're proud of
Easy to Release
How simple, safe, and automated it is for the squad to ship its work to production.
- Risky, painful, manual
- Some manual effort
- Simple, safe, automated
Fun
How much the squad enjoys coming to work and collaborating together.
- Boring and joyless
- Sometimes fun
- We love working together
Health of Codebase
How clean, readable, and well-tested the squad's code is, and how much technical debt it carries.
- A pile of technical debt
- Some rough edges
- Clean, tested, and proud of it
Learning
How much time and opportunity the squad has to learn new and interesting things.
- No time to learn
- Occasional learning
- Always learning new things
Mission
How clear and inspiring the squad finds its higher purpose and focus.
- Unclear and uninspiring
- Somewhat clear
- Clear and exciting
Pawns or Players
How much control the squad has over what it builds and how it builds it.
- Just pawns, no influence
- Some influence
- In control of our destiny
Speed
How quickly the squad gets work done without waiting, delays, or blocking dependencies.
- Always stuck or delayed
- Some delays
- We get stuff done fast
Suitable Process
How well the squad's way of working fits the team and the work it does.
- Our process sucks
- Process is okay
- Our process fits perfectly
Support
How readily the squad gets the help and support it needs when it asks for it.
- Can't get help
- Support is hit or miss
- Always well supported
Team Work
How well the squad collaborates and looks out for one another as a team.
- Disconnected individuals
- Some collaboration
- A gelled super-team
When to use this health check
- Run it as a regular pulse check (for example each sprint or quarter) to track how squad morale and delivery health trend over time.
- Use it during retrospectives to move beyond surface symptoms and surface the dimensions where the squad most needs support.
- Bring it to multiple squads so leadership can spot cross-team patterns while still respecting each team's context.
- Introduce it when a new team forms or reorganises to establish a shared baseline of how things feel.
Tips & tricks
- Have each squad member rate independently before discussing, so the conversation isn't anchored by the loudest voice.
- Focus the discussion on the dimensions with the widest spread of scores — disagreement usually points to the richest conversations.
- Track results over time rather than treating a single snapshot as a verdict; trends reveal whether improvements are sticking.
- Pair each low score with one concrete action and an owner so the check leads to change, not just commentary.
- Keep ratings anonymous to encourage honesty, especially around fun, support, and mission.