There’s a saying where a healthy, happy team is a productive team. This article will discuss why it’s important to measure team health on a regular basis. We will discuss ways to measure team health. As a project leader, you have a responsibility to track your team’s health and make changes based on how they feel about their conditions.
Why is Team Health important?
First, healthy teams deliver higher quality deliverables to stakeholders. They are more likely to deliver business value.
Second, healthy teams are more likely to be innovative and creative. Being agile means teams are self-organizing where they have freedom to choose the way they work. If they are micromanaged, I guarantee they will be unhappy and their work deliverables will show it.
Third, healthy teams are more likely to understand their purpose and feel valuable. This provides a huge mental health boost to each individual. As a result, it will foster a culture that provides value to the organization, their customers, and even their community.
The Team Health Check
A Team Health Check is a self-assessment tool project teams use to measure team health. It allows the team to improve the way they work. The team measures themselves on a set of dimensions and visualizes the results. Iteration retrospectives are usually the best time to perform this activity.
Why do a Team Health Check?
For starters, a team health check helps increase trust and safety within the team. Teammates will build better relationships that foster teamwork and creativity. It also allows raising issues and fixing them quickly.
How to do a Team Health Check using a Team Health Radar
A Team Health Radar is a self-assessment that measures how the team feels about a variety of different dimensions. These dimensions include their work, environment, leadership, communication, work pace, and others. The results are placed in a “radar” that allows the team to analyze their health and identify areas for improvement. The teams responses indicate areas where they can improve. See Figure 1 below:
The radar is measured on a scale of 1-5, which is tallied to show the average score along each dimension. Take a look at Figure 1 above and notice how ownership is at a 5. This means the team has a dedicated product owner who guides the vision and prioritizes work. If you look at teamwork, notice its at a 2. This would indicate the team isn’t working as well together as they they should. In addition, Fun also scores a 2 which can indicate the team may not be as motivated as they should.
Based on these results, the team needs to have an open discussion and figure out where they can improve.
Selecting Dimensions to Measure
You should select dimensions that are helpful to the team. I like using the dimensions below and have found great success with them. It’s a good idea to align your dimensions as close as possible to Agile Values and Principles from the Agile Manifesto. However, it’s up to you to guide the team to measure what’s most important to them.
- Process – We have a way of working that fits our team.
- Ownership – We have a dedicated product owner or business partner who is accountable for our results.
- Value – Our stakeholders are happy with what we deliver and it provides value to them.
- Goal Alignment – We know why we are here and are excited to work towards our goals.
- Communication – We have consistent communication between each other and our stakeholders.
- Support and resources – We get great support and resources when we ask for it.
- Fun – We love working together and have fun going to work.
- Teamwork – We work well together as a team and collaborate well together.
- Easy to release – Releasing our software is painless, simple, and well-automated.
- Learning – We are always learning new and interesting stuff. Our leadership encourages learning.
Facilitating a Team Health Meeting
When you are ready to do your team’s health assessment, set up a meeting for at least an hour or longer, depending on your team size. The goal for the meeting will be to have the team members assess each of the different dimensions you wish to measure.
How it works:
- Before the meeting, draw a blank radar on a flip chart, whiteboard or use an online tool. Refer to the example in Figure 1.
- Explain the radar and dimensions you will examine. Let the team know why those dimensions are important.
- Use a scale of 0-5. Zero means not at all, 5 means as much as possible.
- Pass out a set of cards to each participant. Give them one card for each factor.
- Have each participant rate each dimension, afterwards they place their completed cards in a pile.
- Sort the cards by dimension and figure out the average.
- Connect the dots on the dimensions according to the averages.
Analyzing the Results
Once everyone has rated each dimensions, the averages have been calculated and the dots are connected, it’s time to analyze the results. You will discuss the results with the team, looking at high and low averages. You should discuss questions such as:
- What patterns are visible on the radar?
- What dimensions require improvement, action items, or next steps?
- Are there any dimensions we should celebrate?
- Is there anything that surprises us?
- What should we address to leadership?
Decide What To Do
Now it’s time to pick the top items and plan what to do. Pick two or three items to tackle. You want to be careful not to pick too many items because it will overwhelm the team. It is up to the team to identify actions and set measurable goals. As the leader, your job is to guide and support the team.
An activity I like to do is Dot Voting. This technique gives each member a certain number of votes for each item. For example, you can give each team 5 votes and they can allocate those 5 votes across each item. You can pass out index cards, sticky notes, or something else to represent each vote. They can choose to give one item 5 votes, or give two votes on one item, two votes on another, and 1 vote on another. It doesn’t matter. Once all votes are cast, the items with the highest votes are further discussed and the team will decide on detailed plans. As the leader, it is your job to make sure the team comes to an agreed upon decision.
Conclusion
Agile leadership requires you to measure and monitor team health. Happy, healthy and motivated teams are more successful than unhappy teams. A Team Health Radar is a great way to have your team self-assess how they feel by answering questions related to their morale, leadership, purpose, learning opportunities, and many other dimensions. As a leader you have responsibility to improve the teams morale. It takes time but when you are successful everyone, including your team, organization, and stakeholders will benefit.
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