Get started

Who is this documentation for?

This documentation is for software developers.

It is specifically focussed towards Lead Engineers, Principal Developers, and Principal Engineers who may be managing software developers in delivery teams and want to understand more about how the team feels they are performing.

Background

Within delivery teams there are often several metrics in use to measure squad productivity and quality for example; sprint velocity, incident rates.

These metrics are often by-products of something else.

A low sprint velocity or high incident rates are only symptoms, there is the need to understand the cause.

If there are things which are preventing engineers from working effectively, this can have negative consequences on the overall delivery of the squad.

Developer healthcheck workshops are a tool to help understand more about how an engineering team feels they are performing.

What is a developer healthcheck workshop?

Healthcheck sessions allow a team to record both quantitative and qualitative data about how they are performing across several indicators.

The concept of the healthcheck session is focussed around measuring the health of specifically the engineering squad.

It’s a bit like an agile retrospective session, but specifically focussed for engineers.

Why run a developer healthcheck workshop?

Recording both quantitative and qualitative data allows for analysis and can inform decision-making in how the team should evolve to perform more effectively.

The sessions can bring focus to problem areas and enable prioritisation of work to resolve the issues.

The sessions can also surface issues which aren’t always immediately obvious, for example something which is second nature to a veteran on a team might be difficult for a newly onboarded team member to understand.

History of developer healthcheck workshops

Developer healthchecks are a concept promoted by Spotify in 2014, iterated from past work Spotify had done in 2012 around scaling agile ways of working.