A Team Health Check is a tool for understanding how well a team is doing across a wide-range of topics that impact team's performance, happiness, and overall satisfaction.
A Team Health Check is a simple yet incredibly effective tool for understanding how a team is doing. A facilitator walks the team through a pre-defined set of categories and asks each participant to reflect and vote on how the team is doing in that area. Participants reveal their votes all at once and then spend time discussing, taking notes, and capturing action-items. It's a powerful agile tool for continuous improvement.
The good news is that Team Health Checks are easy (and actually quite fun) to facilitate. Depending on which Team Health Check template you use, you'll go through 8-10 categories in 60-90 minutes. Every topic has an example of good and bad and each team member is asked to vote whether they think the team is doing good, bad, or just ok in that topic. Here's a step-by-step guide:
Let participants know that this exercise is not about judging the team or individual performance but rather to understand what's working and what's not so the team can start working on the areas that need improvement.
The host should read the category and the examples of good and bad out loud. The host can clarify the category if needed but it can be better to let participants interpret the question in their own way, it leads to some interesting discussions.
Each participant is asked to reflect on the question and vote on whether they think the team is doing good, bad, or just ok in that area.
To help eliminate groupthink, the votes should be revealed all at once. The team should try to come to a consensus answer that represents the team as a whole.
Open the floor to discussion once the votes are revealed. Starting with any outlier voters, go around the room and give everyone the opportunity to speak to why they voted the way they did. Capture notes and action-items.
The team will go through each category one-by-one. Time management is important for keeping the team on track to get through all of the questions before the end of the meeting.
Set up a 30-minute meeting to discuss the results and any notes and action items you captured during the session. Determine which areas to focus on and develop an action-plan to improve the team.
Team Health Checks allow you to uncover systemic challenges and comprehensive insights that simply won't come up during regular sprint retrospectives. The guided nature of the Team Health Check forces participants to think about and discuss aspects of the team that are often ignored.
For example, if you use the Development Team Health Check, participants will be asked about the overall quality of the code, how aligned they feel to the core mission, and whether or not they feel like they have enough opportunities to learn. These aren't topics that would be discussed in a sprint retrospective.
The good news is that Team Health Checks are easy (and actually quite fun) to facilitate. Depending on which Team Health Check template you use, you'll go through 8-10 categories in 60-90 minutes. Every topic has an example of good and bad and each team member is asked to vote whether they think the team is doing good, bad, or just ok in that topic. Here's a step-by-step guide:
The Spotify Squad Health Check was first developed by Henrik Kniberg and Kristian Lindwall at Spotify many years ago. It's the original Team Health Check and has gone through many different iterations over the years. This model was created for agile development teams and asks questions about the qualify of the code, the release process, speed, mission, and more.
Atlassian has created a single Team Health Check template that focuses on 8 attributes of healthy teams ranging from team cohesion, values and metrics, continuous improvement, and more. Atlassian originally had a number of templates (Service Team Health Monitor Template, Leadership Team Health Monitor Template, and Project Team Health Monitor Template) but have since consolidated it down to a single template.
Here at RetroWave we've developed a number of Team Health Check templates for agile development and engineering teams, product design and UX teams, customer service teams, and a universal health check template for all teams.
It depends! There isn't a single time interval that works for every time but every 2-3 months seems to be the sweet spot for most teams.
The Team Health Check Retrospective model stands distinct from traditional sprint retrospectives. While sprint retrospectives ask teams to reflect on the more immediate issues from the last sprint, the Team Health Check model takes a much more holistic approach and asks team members to share their perspective on a broad range of factors that influence how the team functions. It prompts discussion around topics like team morale, alignment with organization goals, work-life balance, and more.
This approach fosters a deeper understanding of the team’s overall health and gives team leaders a strong understanding of where to focus their efforts for continuous improvement. It’s not about what went right or wrong in a sprint but rather about creating a high-functioning, happier, and healthier team in the long run.
Luckily it's easy to remotely facilitate a Team Health Check thanks to tools like RetroWave. RetroWave is an online tool for conducting Team Health Checks remotely and in-person. Create a free account, start a session with the template that makes the most sense for your team, and invite participants to join your session. RetroWave will guide you and your team through the Team Health Check categories and let you capture action-items and notes.
