• AssessmentQuestionsForTeamProperties

Evaluation Criteria

Shared Direction

• Is your team charter visible on the wall?
• Can each person on your team name the theme for this release?
• Do you know who your product manager is?
• Can you name a customer who wants this feature?
• Has your team had contact with an end user in the past two weeks?
• Have you spoken with your upper management stakeholder about your project in the past month?
• How do you handle feedback from end users?
• How frequently is end-user feedback incorporated into your software?
• Does your team talk about profitability and customer satisfaction when making decisions?
• Do you feel like you're on a mission, or on a treadmill?
• Do you feel challenged, but confident?

Deliver (customer-valuable) results frequently

• Does your team create a regular visibility report?
• Describe your product release process.
• Does your team avoid taking credit for partial work?
• How many new business functions can the user base do now compared with last month? the month before?
• What is your team's definition of "Done"?
• What features did you deliver this week? Is that more or less than last week?
• Report the number and frequency of datetime stamps on database transactions related to software functionality releases.
• Do you have a current measurement of your team's velocity?
• Have you delivered something of value to someone outside your team every week for the past month?
• Has your team been able to work without a change in priority for the past week?
• Do your team members decide for themselves how much work they take on?
• Is the work specified by end result, rather than how to do it?
• When was the last time your team held a celebration for completed work?
• Does everyone on your team have the resources they need to accomplish their work?
• Is it published how many times your team meets/fails to meet commitments?
• Do your team members understand the work they have signed up for?
• Is your team protected from interruptions?

Collaboration/Unity (Team working better together than individually)

• Are the people liking their job better?
• Put the team members photos up and see if everyone can fill in their names.
• How often do you have non-work related events?
• How many unplanned discussions have you stumbled upon while you're walking around?
• Name something personal about team member X.
• Name the person who helped you the most this week.
• Do you feel energized when working with others?
• How often do you demonstrate your work/features to others?
• How often does your manager/supervisor speak to you outside of meetings?
• Do you have a set of headphones at the office?
• Does your team think they are collaborating? Does your team think they need to increase/decrease collaboration?
• How often do you ask a person to help you with a problem? How often do you help others with theirs?
• When the team is under pressure to deliver quickly, do they work together or berak apart to work individually?
• Could each of the team members explain the feature that was completed?
• Each member of your team can explain the purpose of your team - and each person's explanation is essentially the same.
• Are your team members enthusiastic about accomplishing the team purpose?
• Does each and every team member make a significant contribution, every week?
• When there is disagreement, does your team generate five or more alternative ideas?
• Is your team willing to try something they don't agree with, on an evaluation basis?
• Do your team members treat each other and people outside the team with respect at all times?
• Have your team members given each other positive feedback in the past week?
• Are your team members comfortable taking responsibility?
• No down time because someone isn't present
• Does your team have a shared history/common stories?
• Has your team gone to lunch together in the past week? (Or other non-work activity).
• Have two or more members of your team sat together working for at least an hour during the past week?
• Has one team member taught something to another team member during the past week?
• Does your team have a wiki or similar knowledge repository? Has it been updated or added to in the past two days?

Resilience (Adapation and learning)

• Can you see the "Try This" list on the wall as you walk around?
• Are we doing things differently than before? and it's more effective? and we like it better?
• Name an A-ha learned this week.
• What blogs are you subscribed to?
• Has anything changed this week because of the reflection?
• What was the last book you read?
• Can your team members identify something they've learned this week?
• How do you introduce process changes?
• How do you evaluate a process change?
• When was the last time you forwarded a sweet URL/article to a friend/coworker?
• Are you/is the team making the same mistakes repeatedly?
• Have you met one-on-one with each of your employees in the past two weeks to discuss their work interests and aspirations?
• Has your team held a reflection workshop in the past two weeks? Has your team tried something new as a result of the reflection workshop?
• Do the team members help each other to solve problems without manager intervention?
• When your team talks together, are different views expressed?
• Has the team met informally to generate ideas in the past week?
• When was the last time your team taught a brown bag session to learn a new technique or technical skill?
• Do your team members have work time set aside to work on their own projects/skills development?
• Are your team members open to ideas from outside the team?
• When the unexpected happens, does your team react with fear, or confidence?
• How do you evaluate how well the team is performing?
• Have you as a manager changed the way you act as a result of feedback from the team?