Squad Health Check

• Every few sprints or once a quarter, to track trends over time.
• When you want a broad picture rather than one sprint's events.
• Teams that want anonymous input on sensitive topics.

Purpose: Get a shared, honest picture of team health across 10 dimensions, spot trends, and improve the weakest areas.

• 🚀 Easy to release

  🟢 Shipping is simple, safe, painless and mostly automated.

  🔴 Shipping is risky and painful, full of manual steps, and takes ages.

• 🧭 Suitable process

  🟢 Our way of working fits us really well.

  🔴 Our way of working gets in the way.

• 🧱 Tech quality

  🟢 We're proud of our code: clean, readable and well tested.

  🔴 The code base is a mess and tech debt is out of control.

• 💎 Value

  🟢 We deliver great things that make our stakeholders happy.

  🔴 We deliver things we're not proud of, and stakeholders are unhappy.

• ⚡ Speed

  🟢 We get things done quickly, with little waiting or delay.

  🔴 We rarely finish anything; we keep getting stuck or interrupted.

• 🎯 Mission

  🟢 We know exactly why we're here, and it excites us.

  🔴 We don't know why we're here; there's no clear picture or focus.

• 🎉 Fun

  🟢 We love coming to work and have a great time together.

  🔴 Work feels dull and draining.

• 📚 Learning

  🟢 We're learning interesting things all the time.

  🔴 There's never time to learn anything.

• 🤝 Support

  🟢 We get great help and support whenever we ask.

  🔴 We get stuck because the help we ask for doesn't come.

• ♟️ Pawns or players

  🟢 We're in control: we decide what to build and how.

  🔴 We're pawns: we have no say in what we build or how.

1. 1

   Set the stage · 3 min

   Explain the 10 indicators and the traffic lights. Stress that ratings are anonymous and about the team, not individuals — this is a conversation starter, not a performance review.

2. 2

   Rate each indicator · 10 min

   Everyone rates every indicator on their own: 🟢 awesome, 🟡 some problems, 🔴 really bad — plus whether it's getting better or worse.

3. 3

   Reveal the health map · 5 min

   Walk through the map. Look for red and yellow areas, disagreement (mixed colours), and indicators trending down.

4. 4

   Vote on focus areas · 4 min

   Ask everyone to vote for the indicators the team should improve first.

5. 5

   Discuss focus areas · 12 min

   Start with the most-voted indicator. Ask what's behind the colours and what 🟢 would look like. Capture ideas as comments.

6. 6

   Agree on actions · 6 min

   Pick one or two improvements for the weakest areas. Re-run the health check in a few sprints to see the trend.

Notes a software team might write:

Expected outcome: A team health map, the 1–2 areas to improve first, and actions to move them towards green.

• Re-run every few sprints and compare: trends matter more than single colours.
• Mixed colours on one indicator are a great conversation starter.
• Ratings are anonymous team totals — never ask who voted red.
• This is a conversation starter, not a performance metric. Don't share results to rank or compare teams.

Everyone rates each indicator anonymously as green, yellow or red with a trend. Ratings stay hidden until the reveal, which shows a team health map.

Each stage comes with instructions for the facilitator and the participants and a suggested timer you can adjust. Teammates join with a link and their name; no account needed.