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.

What is 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.

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.

Previous surveys

 * FY2014-15 Q1

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.

Artifact: Invitation Template

Each area of the survey will be evaluated by teams on a 5-point scale of ‘crappy’, ‘crappy/mediocre’, 'mediocre', 'awesome/mediocre', 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.

See also: Guidance for facilitators

Open questions
See talk page