Team health
The best-known practice is the Squad Health Check developed by Spotify in 2014 and described by Henrik Kniberg and Kristian Lindwall. Although Spotify has evolved significantly since its publication, the model has been widely adopted and adapted by teams across the industry.
Why measure team health
Delivery metrics measure the symptom; team health measures the cause. A team can maintain its velocity over several sprints while accumulating burnout, dissatisfaction, and loss of purpose, and then collapse unexpectedly. Measuring team health regularly makes it possible to detect deterioration before it turns into a crisis.
The health areas model
Spotify's Squad Health Check assesses eleven areas using traffic-light cards (green / yellow / red / not applicable), answering two questions per area: current state and trend.
The eleven areas of the original model are:
- Easy to release: can we deploy safely and frequently?
- Suitable process: does our way of working help us?
- Tech quality: are we proud of the quality of our code?
- Value: are we delivering something that matters to users?
- Speed: are we moving at a pace that feels right to us?
- Mission: do we know why we do what we do?
- Fun: is it enjoyable to work on this team?
- Learning: are we growing as professionals?
- Support: do we feel the organization backs us?
- Autonomy: do we have control over how we do our work?
- Communication: do we communicate well inside and outside the team?
How to apply it
- The team meets periodically (every sprint or every two sprints) to carry out the diagnosis.
- Each member votes individually for each area (green / yellow / red).
- The results are visualized, and the areas with the greatest divergence or a negative trend are discussed.
- One or two priority areas are identified to work on in the next cycle.
- The results are recorded to visualize the trend over time.
It is important that the session be facilitated with enough psychological safety for answers to be honest. A health check where everyone votes green because they don't feel safe saying red provides no information.
Team health in teams using AI
The adoption of AI tools introduces new dimensions of team health that traditional models do not cover:
- Does the team feel it understands and is in control of how it uses AI?
- Is AI reducing the workload or adding extra pressure?
- Is there anxiety about AI's role in the team's future?
- Are the new tools creating divisions between those who master them and those who don't?
The Agile Enabler is responsible for detecting these signals and creating space to discuss them in the retrospective.
Common mistake
Running the health check as a ritual without acting on the results. If the team flags the same areas in red week after week and nobody takes specific actions to improve them, the health check loses credibility and the team stops answering honestly. Team health is only valuable if the results lead to real conversations and decisions.
References
- Kniberg, Henrik; Lindwall, Kristian. (2014). "Spotify Squad Health Check". Spotify Engineering Blog.
See also
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