DOM PRICE • @DOMPRICE

What Awesome Sauce Tastes Like

BEN CROTHERS • @BENCROTHERS

Getting & Keeping Your Teams Healthy... the Atlassian Way

The following information is presented as-is, and does not guarantee success, riches, fame and glory. Dominic Price and Benjamin Crothers are not real medical doctors, nor are they to be taken seriously, really. Adoption of their suggestions may lead to unpredictable side effects, like, oh anything from high-fives to random jazz hands to spontaneous combustion. May not actually be true.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER

U N H E A LT H Y T E A M S

What we’ll cover

T H E H E A LT H M O N I T O R

A C T I V I T Y: R U N O N E O N Y O U R S E L F

Y O U R T U R N

Great intention… Great people… Great energy… We shipped…

Teams can have:

No clear owner Team never gelled Strategy was fuzzy No clear timelines

And yet, we see familiar symptoms:

Unnecessary hacks

From one project to the next.

Different processesMaking it harder for team members to swap to other teams.

Knock-on effects

Clunky workarounds just become ‘the way we do things around here’.

What this means across the company

We looked into what was happening in teams across Atlassian. It all came down to…

Confidence

Confidence in building…

The right team

The right way

The right thing

The right time

We landed on a recipe for success*

Full-time owner Balanced team Shared understanding Value and metrics

End-to-end demo Readme Dependencies Velocity

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2

5

7

6

3

4 8

* This works for us, and the language works for us; what would it be for you?

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WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

Teamwork

Communication

Tracking

Definition of done

Quality checking

Ownership Decision-making Fun

Let teams work they way they want to work…

WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

Teamwork

Communication

Tracking

Definition of done

Quality checking

Ownership Decision-making Fun

…Provided they aim for these 8 healthy areas:

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Enter the Health Monitor

Uses the 8 health areas as ‘vital signs’ for your team You do it together as a team An asset to add to and check in on, over time

WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

Teamwork

Communication

Tracking

Definition of done

Quality checking

Ownership Decision-making Fun

The Health Monitor tracks the health areas

HEALTH MONITOR

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How to do a Health Monitor session

1 hour first time, 30 minutes after that Everyone rates how they think the team is on the health areas as red, amber or green individually Everyone then brings their answers together to discuss similarities and differences As a team, discuss how to get to green

Full-time owner

Balanced team

Shared understanding

Value and metrics

End-to-end demo

Readme

Dependencies

Velocity

Track health by measuring at checkpoints

CHECKPOINTS 1 2 3 4 5

Over

coaching sessions

200

Over

people coached

800

An amazing

relationships saved ;)∞

We wouldn’t have shipped Bitbucket Snippets if it wasn’t for the health monitor.

M I K E M E L N I C K I , H E A D O F D E V TO O L S E N G I N E E R I N G

“ ”

Hop up on the bed…

Get into a pair (or 3) Write the 8 health areas on a page (next slide) Rate your team for each attribute (red, amber or green) Discuss with each other why you rated each attribute each colour

Activity time: Do a health monitor together

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Full-time owner Balanced team Shared understanding Value and metrics

1 End-to-end demo Readme Dependencies Velocity

5

2 6

3 7

4 8

The 8 attributes:

What are your ‘a-HA’ moments, when you rate your team against these areas?

Pro tips…

Regular check-ups

Pick 2 areas that will impact the most, and focus on them first.

Stakeholder struggles?Use the health monitor as a discussion point.

Go for impact

Build it into your team’s cadence, and make it natural.

Grab yours to feel healthy Use our 8 healthy team attributes, or

(as a team) come up with your own.

Let us knowWe’d like to know how you and your team went with it.

Try it

Get the full how-to, plus more, at atlassian.com/healthmonitor

Find out more

Thank you

DOM PRICE • @DOMPRICE BEN CROTHERS • @BENCROTHERS