Learn sprint health metric vocabulary: velocity trend, happiness metric, Spotify health check, team NPS, psychological safety indicators, and DORA metrics in Scrum contexts.
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Over the last 6 sprints, a team's story points completed were: 34, 36, 32, 28, 25, 22. The Scrum Master presents this data at the retrospective. What metric is being discussed and what does the pattern indicate?
Velocity trend tracks how many story points (or items) a team completes per sprint over time. A downward trend (34→22 over 6 sprints) is a health warning — potential causes include team member attrition, increasing technical debt, unmanaged scope creep, or declining morale. Velocity should be used as a planning tool and health indicator, not a performance target (Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure).
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At the end of each sprint, team members answer: 'How happy are you with the team as a working environment? (1–5)' The Scrum Master tracks this over time. What is this metric called?
The happiness metric (or happiness index) was popularised by Henrik Kniberg at Spotify. It is a simple, frequent pulse check on team morale and satisfaction. Unlike annual engagement surveys, sprint-cadence tracking catches drops quickly, allowing the Scrum Master to investigate before problems become serious. A sustained drop in happiness often precedes a velocity drop by 1–2 sprints.
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A Scrum Master runs a quarterly workshop where the team rates 11 dimensions (e.g., 'Easy to release', 'Fun', 'Health of codebase') as green, yellow, or red, and discusses trends. What framework is this based on?
The Spotify Squad Health Check (created by Henrik Kniberg and Kristian Lindwall) evaluates teams across 11 dimensions using a RAG (Red-Amber-Green) status and trend indicator (improving/stable/declining). It is a qualitative team self-assessment, not a management audit. The key dimensions include: Easy to Release, Suitable Process, Tech Quality, Value, Speed, Mission, Fun, Learning, Support, Pawns or Players, and Teamwork.
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Which four metrics — known as the DORA Four Keys — are used to measure software delivery performance in engineering teams using Scrum or other agile methods?
The DORA Four Keys (from the DevOps Research and Assessment programme by Dr. Nicole Forsgren et al., published in 'Accelerate') measure elite vs. low-performing teams: 1) Deployment Frequency (how often you deploy to production), 2) Lead Time for Changes (commit to production), 3) Change Failure Rate (% of deployments causing incidents), 4) Mean Time to Restore (MTTR) — how quickly you recover from failures. Elite teams deploy daily+, with MTTR under 1 hour.
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A Scrum Master notices team members rarely challenge decisions in retrospectives, agree with whoever speaks last, and avoid raising concerns with the tech lead. This may indicate low ___________.
Psychological safety (Amy Edmondson, Harvard) is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Google's Project Aristotle found it to be the single most important factor in high-performing teams. Behavioural indicators of LOW safety: silence in retros, no disagreement visible, ideas only shared privately, blame-avoidance language, deference to authority. Scrum Masters can measure it with safety checks and short anonymous surveys.