Based on careful experimentation over many years, the Squad Health Check Model by Spotify labs is one exercise an agile coach or team must have in their toolkit. Simple traffic light indicators lets each member share their perception easily.
For the squad, it builds awareness and a balanced perspective. Scrum Masters can identify what will best support the team.
TeamRetro’s digital version of the squad check means you can efficiently collect input from everyone in real time, whether or not they in the same room.
Results are instantly tallied and you can keep a track of the squads progress over time without the need for manual collation. Sort responses by most positive, most negative or most mixed and facilitate better discussions using presentation mode.
Squad Health Check dimensions
Delivering Value
Good: We deliver great stuff! We’re proud of it and our stakeholders are really happy.
Bad: We deliver crap. We feel ashamed to deliver it. Our stakeholders hate us.
Easy to Release
Good: Releasing is simple, safe, painless and mostly automated.
Bad: Releasing is risky, painful, lots of manual work and takes forever.
Fun
Good: We love going to work and have great fun working together!
Bad: Boooooooring…
Health of Codebase
Good: We’re proud of the quality of our code! It is clean, easy to read and has great test coverage.
Bad: Our code is a pile of dung and technical debt is raging out of control.
Learning
Good: We’re learning lots of interesting stuff all the time!
Bad: We never have time to learn anything.
Mission
Good: We know why we are here and we’re really excited about it!
Bad: We have no idea why we are here. There’s no high lever picture or focus. Our so-called mission is completely unclear and uninspiring.
Pawns or Players
Good: We are in control of our own destiny! We decide what to build and how to build it.
Bad: We are just pawns in a game of chess with no influence over what we build or how we build it.
Speed
Good: We get stuff done really quickly! No waiting and no delays.
Bad: We never seem to get anything done. We keep getting stuck or interrupted. Stories keep getting stuck on dependencies.
Suitable Process
Good: Our way of working fits us perfectly!
Bad: Our way of working sucks!
Support
Good: We always get great support and help when we ask for it!
Bad: We keep getting stuck because we can’t get the support and help that we ask for.
Teamwork
Good: We are a totally gelled super-team with awesome collaboration!
Bad: We are a bunch of individuals that neither know nor care about what the other people in the squad are doing.
How to create a Health Check in TeamRetro
Your template is ready to go
Under Health Checks, select the health check you’d like to complete. Decide if you want to survey the team anonymously, using aliases or openly.
Reveal and discuss the results
Your health check data is displayed showing the average response and tally of each response. Sort dimensions by most positive, negative or mixed responses to make discussions more meaningful.
Keep conversation on track with Presentation Mode
Switch to presentation mode to sync devices making it easier to facilitate and focus conversations. Capture comments and actions along the way.
Review your action plan
Assign action owners and set due dates for new items and review prior actions. This action list can be tracked, shared or integrated into your other workflow tools.
Share the results
Great work, you are all done! Share the results with your team via email, download and print or publish to tools like Jira, Asana and Trello. Results can be tracked in your dashboard.