Scrum & Happiness Metric
Being a part of a self-organized scrum team requires trusting and respecting team members to build good long-term relationships. The happiness or the stress of the members indicates the health of the team.
The consultancy company in Stockholm called Crisp, recently introduced the “happiness index” as the primary metric to drive the company. Henrik Kniberg who is the founder of this company, outlines the “Happy Crisper Index.” in his blog.
They measure the happiness continuously through a live Google Spreadsheet. People update it approximately once per month.
Here are the columns:NameHow happy are you with your company? (scale 1-5)Last update of this row (timestamp)What feels best right now?What feels worst right now?What would increase your happiness index?Other comments
If they see a 1 or 2 on any row, that acts as an effective call for help. People go out of their way to find out how they can help that person, which often results in some kind of process improvement in the company.
Another experience of the “happiness index” is the Liip’s practice. They try to identify issues of individuals or the entire team during the retrospective meeting. In the retrospective meetings the team members talk about their happiness metric in front of the team.
For issues that came up multiple times, they raise a team impediment in the impediment backlog. And they take immediate action when any person’s happiness number decreases below 2.
Suha Selçuk
