#354 Introducing Team Health
Friday Ship #354 | June 30th, 2023
This week we tried using our newly released team health check feature for the first time. As a company we’ve been keeping track of both internal and external feedback and requests for team health checks, so we’re pretty excited this is now available to all users! The process of creating this feature turned into a great example of the way our team collaborates. Here’s a look at how it went.
Kicking off
At the latest product team retreat, Georg Bremer worked with a group of designers and developers to figure out what the first version of this could look like and how we could make the results useful for teams.
Refining the UX
After the retreat, Georg and I (Alicia) worked out a UX flow and looked for areas where we still had questions about what this should be. We set out to answer a few key questions:
- How do we preserve psychological safety?
- Will it work with asynchronous and synchronous meetings?
- How will the view be different for facilitators vs. participants?
- What is the most useful way to view results in the meeting summary?
- Will the design hold up if we expand the functionality later?
Design and Development
By the time design work began, we had a pretty solid footing with the UX. The design phase was quick and mostly a matter of cleaning up the UI. Georg already had an understanding of the flow, so he was able to get started on development at the same time, allowing us to get to launch quicker.
Launch
There were two aspects to consider for the launch:
- Who are we rolling it out to?
- How will we market it?
For the rollout, we discussed with Bruce on the data team and decided on a global rollout to get as much feedback as possible.
Our spectacular marketing team each took a different step. Aviva emailed out to users who had requested team health checks to let them know it’s available, Lorena let all users know about the new feature, Gareth put together a landing page and brainstormed blog content, and Emily showed off her video skills by creating a demo video.
Feedback
After users run a retrospective with a health check, they are taken to the meeting summary where they have the option to provide feedback. It’s been so exciting for us to see what people are saying:
- “It helps make it OK for coworkers to not be OK.”
- “Low threshold, easy to use!”
- “Not clear what I’m supposed to do with it”
- “I’m not sure how to facilitate a discussion around it once team members submit their answers”
- “Everyone was able to share their feedback honestly”
Iteration
The feedback around facilitating the discussion has been great to hear. From all the feedback we had assumed we would get, asking for guidance on how to facilitate the phase was not on the list. We’re working on adding facilitation tips as a first iteration, but we have lots of ideas for more!
Have you tried team health checks yet? Let us know what you think!
Metrics
After a high week, we’re experiencing a low this week. Most metrics are down, although standup meetings run is at an all-time high, with roughly 50% of those meetings being recurring.
This week we…
…Published a blog on how to write user stories and another with 45+ user story examples.
…Published a resource of 40+ psychological safety quotes. Got one we should add to our list, let us know by emailing or commenting.
…Started assembling a culture squad to strengthen Parabol’s culture across circles & grow psychological safety for all members
Next week we’ll
…Take a break from regularly scheduled sprints to fix bugs, clean up tasks, continue planning, and tackle passion projects
