Team Health Check – a catalyst for agile transformation

Key Takeaways

Health checks are only effective when they lead to real actions. Without consistent derivation and implementation of improvements, they remain a mandatory exercise without added value.
Participation instead of evaluation increases ownership. Teams must be actively involved to foster trust, motivation, and accountability.
Regularity and Inspect & Adapt are key. Health checks only unfold their impact in a continuous learning and improvement process with follow-up and clear implementation.
Leadership plays a crucial role. Active, open involvement of leaders creates psychological safety and turns health checks into a true driver of transformation.

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Project Team Health Checks: trend or true transformation driver?

Project Team Health Checks have become a core element of agile transformation. While regular status assessments seem useful at first glance, the question remains: Are Health Checks a true lever for change or do they risk becoming an end in themselves?

What is a Project Team Health Check?

A Project Team Health Check, often referred to in agile environments as an Agile Team Health Check, is a structured, regular self-assessment conducted by a team or department along key success factors of agile practices – such as collaboration, customer centricity, technical excellence, or continuous improvement. The purpose of this assessment is to make the team’s strengths and development areas visible, and to derive concrete actions for improvement based on those insights.

Between trend and transformation

Health Checks have become an

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established practice, often using custom-built tools. But why does the potential of this measure so often remain unrealized? Reasons for this include:

Results lack consequences: Insights from Health Checks are not consistently translated into tangible improvement actions.
Teams feel judged rather than empowered: Conducting a Health Check can give the impression of being externally evaluated, which may harm trust and motivation.
Disconnected from strategy and leadership: Health Checks often happen in isolation, without a clear link to overarching corporate strategy or leadership involvement to drive action.
Ritual instead of learning: The Health Check becomes a routine task with no real value, seen as a one-off exercise instead of an integral part of ongoing learning and improvement.

To unlock the full potential of Health Checks, they must be purposefully designed and integrated into the transformation journey. These three principles for Impactful Health Checks make the difference:

1. Involvement over evaluation

Health Checks should not be seen as external assessments, but as shared spaces for reflection. Teams should be actively involved, by selecting relevant topics or weighing dimensions. This not only fosters understanding of their strengths and weaknesses but also increases engagement and accountability.

2. Connected to Inspect & Adapt

A Health Check should always occur within an Inspect-and-Adapt cycle. It’s not a one-off event, but the launchpad for action where the full value is realized when conducted regularly. Successful transformations show that a structured Health Check, followed by a follow-up workshop, leads to measurable change and boosts team engagement. This consistency reveals itself through stronger relationships, improved processes, and better product quality.

3. Bring leadership on board

Leadership participation in Health Checks is vital. When leaders use the Health Check as a mirror for their organization and engage openly in reflection, the process becomes a catalyst for real development. This requires psychological safety and a willingness to acknowledge blind spots and take action.

How to conduct a Project or Agile Team Health Check yourself?

A Project or Agile Team Health Check isn’t just for consultants or large enterprises. Any team can run one themselves. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

Kick-off & invite: Inform your team early about the purpose and format, ideally in a safe, confidential setting.
Choose focus areas: Together, define 5–7 relevant dimensions (e.g., collaboration, technical quality, goal clarity).
Self-assessment: Use simple scales (e.g., 1–5) to score each dimension individually.
Visualization: Creates a spider chart or heat map to make the results tangible and comparable via further health checks.
Reflect & discuss: Talk about the results as a team, identify perception gaps, and define areas for development.
Plan action: Derive concrete next steps – small, achievable, and time-bound.
Follow-up: Schedule a check-in in 6–8 weeks to review changes.

Our approach at Wavestone

At Wavestone, we apply a co-creative Project Team Health Check approach tailored to the organization’s maturity level. We combine qualitative interviews with digital self-assessments and facilitate the process to enable real team dialogue.
Our focus is not on conducting the Health Check itself, but on the impact it creates. For us, the Health Check is not a goal, but a trigger for targeted change. We support our clients from reflection to concrete action planning and successful implementation – iteratively, collaboratively, and as equals.
The following visualization shows how we at Wavestone help make results tangible – for example through spider charts or heatmaps that instantly reveal progress and development areas.

Conclusion

When used effectively, Project or Agile Team Health Checks are far more than a trend: they are a powerful lever for cultural change, continuous improvement, and strategic steering. What matters is not the tool – but the mindset: Only those willing to reflect regularly, act consistently, and take responsibility for development will turn a Health Check into a true transformation driver.