Team Practices Group/Health check survey/Guidance for facilitators

Schedule the meeting

 * 1) Begin scheduling immediately after each quarter ends, so that teams can assess their quarterly goals just before participating in THC.
 * 2) Ask the team lead for a list of attendees.
 * 3) Put together the full invitation list
 * 4) Whoever is embedded in that team should be required
 * 5) Every other TPG member should be optional
 * 6) Ask an engineering admin to schedule the meeting, at a time that works for all represented timezones. Here is a sample of the email you could customize and then send to the admins (currently both Sarah R and Megan N):

Advance preparation
The goal of this section is to prepare two artifacts used in the meeting: The "Notes" (a word processing doc), and the "Survey" (a spreadsheet). Both are kept in google docs. You will also update the meeting invite and a higher level doc: "Health Check Overall Results" (to point to the artifacts).
 * 1) If this team has not done a THC before, go into google docs and create a new "google sheets" document type for the survey. The traditional naming convention is like: "(Community Liasons) Health Check Survey". Be sure to share it with the following, but uncheck the "Notify people via email" box:
 * 2) Can View: All the members of the team participating in the survey. Tip: you can go into the meeting invitation, choose "email guests", copy all the addresses, and paste them into the "share with others" field. (You should delete the TPG members that got pasted, since they will get edit access via the group, in the next step).
 * 3) Can Edit: The TPG google group. Sharing with the group, rather than individuals, ensures that future hires will automatically have access to it.
 * 4) From the latest sheet/tab of the master survey spreadsheet, click on the down arrow next to the sheet name, choose "Copy to...", and choose the destination team spreadsheet. This will create a new tab in the team spreadsheet, which might need to be renamed.
 * 5) Create a new Notes doc in google docs for this instance, and pre-populate the Notes doc with the date, a link to the current THC information page, and a list of the focus areas as headings to be filled in. (See sample template below). Also share it, but uncheck the "Notify people via email" box:
 * 6) Can Edit: All the members of the team participating in the survey. Tip: you can go into the meeting invitation, choose "email guests", copy all the addresses, and paste them into the "share with others" field. (You might want to delete the TPG members that got pasted, since they will get access via the group, in the next step).
 * 7) Can Edit: The TPG google group. Sharing with the group, rather than individuals, ensures that future hires will automatically have access to it.
 * 8) In the calendar, edit the meeting description to add a link to the notes doc. To get this link, you must go into the Notes doc, choose "Share", and then "Advanced". Do NOT choose "Get Sharable Link", as that will open up the document to all of WMF. When you save the meeting invitation, don't send updates.
 * 9) Enter the links for this team's Notes doc and the Survey spreadsheet in the current quarter's "Overall Results" google doc (which should have been shared with you). For 2014-15 Q4, this document is: https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/document/d/162ZMqt6W4I9q0mIImsRb1VTZKhbsNEvtEuIH39tEfrw/edit?usp=sharing

Sample Template for an empty notes doc:

One or two days before the meeting
Send an email reminder to the participants ahead of time (a day or two before). The calendar feature "email guests" works great for this. Here is a sample, which you can customize as needed (and be sure to replace the placeholders!).

Last-minute Preparation
On your laptop, open the following:
 * The team's health check spreadsheet
 * The notes doc
 * The current THC
 * Overall Results doc (so you can jot notes during the meeting about questions or problems regarding the survey itself)

During the Meeting

 * 1) At the start, briefly cover the following topics:
 * 2) Consider reading the preamble (https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Health_check_survey_results), but most of it is summarized in the following points.
 * 3) This is a retrospective (chance to reflect and learn), covering the past quarter
 * 4) Focus here on raising issues (good or bad), not finding solutions
 * 5) Definition of "Team Health": Team health is a qualitative measure based on the team's assessment of 11 focus areas (‘Quality’ and ‘Fun’ are two of the areas, for example) that were chosen as health indicators for WMF teams.
 * 6) This is not a performance evaluation or way for managers to judge teams
 * 7) Team ratings in each focus area will be shared with WMF. In-meeting notes will only be available to this team and its managers (and TPG), although a few non-attributed quotes might be shared with WMF.
 * 8) For each focus area, team will aim to reach consensus on a rating, which can be compared to previous quarters to detect trends
 * 9) 5-point rating scale (awesome, awesome-mediocre, mediocre, mediocre-crappy, crappy)
 * 10) Quick pace: Need to cover 11 focus areas in about an hour
 * 11) Notes are very important. Everyone should help add and clarify notes as we go. Please put any comments directly in the notes doc, and not just in a chat window.
 * 12) Facilitate the discussion.
 * 13) Keep an eye on the time.
 * 14) After each focus area, check the clock.  To complete 11 and also have time for introductions and retrospection, the team should spend an average of about five minutes per focus area.
 * 15) [PROPOSED TARGETS - update with reality check after Q1 THC]
 * 16) After 30 minutes, the team should have completed 3.
 * 17) After 60 minutes, the team should have completed 8.
 * 18) Do not cut off discussion prematurely.  If a team is behind the pace, mention the timing to the team, interrupting only if necessary, and ask them to decide if they are getting value from going deep, or if they want to be moved forward to cover more different areas.
 * 19) If at all possible, save 5-10 minutes at the end for a quick retrospective about the experience, the survey, and the process overall.

Post-meeting

 * 1) If teams have suggestions for the health check process itself (areas for improvement or areas that are unclear to them), make a note in the "Overall Results" google doc.
 * 2) Do some self-reflection, and add any thoughts to the "Overall Results" doc, either specific to this team, or general (at the bottom).
 * 3) (Optional/Proposed): Follow up with the team lead to see if they have any concerns or feedback that they didn't want to share in front of the whole group.