A healthy and motivated team performs better (#12)

Motivation

Change is hard, but not impossible. Conducting regular health checks on a development team is essential for several reasons. But how and where do you start? It’s the small things that matter.

The journey

When I once joined a new company, there were hardly any team check-ins. The only time we had a retrospective was once a month, where team members could voluntarily speak up. However, only one person took notes for the team, which were also not visible to others, and the entire process was conducted through Teams. Moreover, since participation was voluntary, it was always the same individuals who spoke up. All in all the motivation was low. And I didn’t feel like there was any progress afterwards.

Solution approach

As the first product designer in the company, I had the opportunity to introduce new tools like Figma. I also didn’t hesitate to introduce FigJam, a great tool for collaboration and research. I first presented it to the team I was assigned to, which consisted of four people in total. We conducted our first retrospectives using FigJam, and I facilitated the process by creating a FigJam board with two subjects: “What went well?” and “What problems did we face?” which later changed into “What can we improve?“. Because people tended to write down their personal problems more than the team’s problems. The modified wording resulted in a better outcome for the team on issues that required improvement.

The process

What went well?

We start with the positive aspects first. We ask each participant to write down their bullet points on post-its, describing what went well, what made their week, or what was the highlight during the project (2-3 minutes).

Then, everyone presents their post-its (1 minute each), with no further discussion or talking.

What can we improve?

For the next step, we follow a similar pattern. We ask each participant to write down what they think could be improved or what impediments they faced while working on their task (3-5 minutes).

Then, everyone presents their post-its (1-2 minutes each), without further discussion or talking.

Sorting & Grouping

After everyone presents their points, we collaborate to group and sort the post-its, and rephrase the subjects as “how might we” questions. Then, we vote on which question to tackle first or where everyone wants to give input.

Solving

We address small topics immediately, while bigger ones become an Action Point, and a person gets assigned to take charge and follow up.

The response was overwhelmingly positive, with everyone taking part and giving input to improve the team’s capability.

Measuring the health status

After each retrospective every participant is asked to rate different topics. Each topic has a defined range for good (green dot) and bad (red dot). An arrow also indicates in detail the direction of the trend, whether it is getting better or worse.

For example, regarding speed

Green: We get stuff done really quickly. No waiting, no delays.
Red: We never seem to finish anything. We keep getting stuck or interrupted. Stories have too many dependencies.

Topics

Goal alignment / Mission
Ownership
Value
Suitable Process
Speed
Tech Quality
Easy to Release
Learning
Fun

The level of satisfaction has grown immensely. What a success! What did we changed? Through retrospectives and health checks, we aligned our team and pinpointed areas to improve, specifically speed and streamlined processes. Drawing on these insights, we tried out Linear App. Although we’re still in the early stages, it has already boosted both our output and overall team quality. And remember always: