Team Practices Group/Health check survey

Survey goal
The team health check survey is intended to measure qualitative aspects of working on a WMF engineering team. The survey will be used to inform targeted areas of improvement for individual teams, measure improvements in team health from quarter to quarter, and provide a barometer for team health across WMF engineering. Health of all teams, as measured by this survey, should be transparent and visible on a continuous basis. The survey will be completed collaboratively by an entire team rather than by individual team members.

Survey focus areas
These 'focus areas' are qualities/aspects of WMF engineering teams that, when taken collectively, can serve as a barometer of a team's overall health. This list should be kept to 10-12 high-level focus areas universally applicable across WMF engineering teams.

Influencers/Indicators
These are important factors that influence and/or provide an indication of awesomeness/crappiness for various higher-level focus areas. Many if not all of these came up while brainstorming the high-level focus areas for the survey, and are included here to help frame thinking about certain focus areas.

Timeline to launch

 * Post draft documents to mediawiki.org by 11 August 2014 ✅
 * Finalize documents for launch by 31 August 2014 ✅
 * Begin collecting data as early as 1 September 2014 to set baselines at the end of Q1 FY2014-2015, which will help inform team improvement efforts through Q2
 * Inspect and adapt the process quarterly thereafter

Implementation details
At least once per quarter, teams will collaboratively respond to the survey in a ‘health check workshop’, facilitated by a member of the Team Practices Group. Implementation details of the workshop are up to the facilitator.

Each area of the survey will be evaluated by teams on a 3-point scale of ‘crappy’, ‘meh’, or ‘awesome’. If there are areas on the survey a team doesn’t care about, they can be skipped. Teams can add areas that they feel are missing from the survey. The survey will evolve with the collective needs/perspectives of the teams through quarterly evaluation by Team Practices Group members.

Open questions
See talk page