Agility is fundamentally about feedback and response. One of the shortest feedback loops is the 3-minute braking test, passing code, TDD cycle, the longest is the Idea to Market lead time which we continually look to shorten and improve on. One feedback loop I've always found of great value is a regular Health Check from the delivery teams. Every time we conduct one we have always gained greater insight into where we feel we are, what's shifting around us and most importantly it's initiated the conversations on where next we should be heading. It's interesting to note that as time has gone on these Health Checks, for me, have evolved to become less focused on individual squads, but have broadened out to encompass the wider IT organisation (Tribe) as a whole. It will be interesting to see if, as I suspect, this trend continues and it becomes a Company-wide activity. #TechCompanyJourney
Anyway, I digress, back to the Health Check and how they can help you with your agile journeys. Pre-Covid I always used a simple flipchart setup in our communal areas where people could dot-vote on each health category with a sheet of sticky dots. The 12 health dimensions looked at a broad spectrum of things like Code Health, Autonomy and Trust. I've used this many times with different organisations and found it to be invaluably insightful especially when the results haven't been quite what I expected.
The original Squad Health Check I used came from the Spotify link here,
https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/09/16/squad-health-check-model/
Shout out to Henrik Kniberg
When working from home became the norm due to Covid, I came up with a MS Forms version of the questionnaire, it's simple, only takes a moment to fill out and can be shared anonymously. It also has the added benefit of capturing free-form improvement ideas for each health dimension.
Really pleased with the speed and direction of travel it has shown for us over the last couple of years, as ever there is still more to do.
If you think this would be useful for your teams I'm sharing a link below to the Forms template, feel free to copy, use & improve.
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