Spotify Squad Health Check

You can feel when a squad is off. Standups drag, releases get scary, and someone mutters “this process isn’t working” — but nobody can quite say where it’s breaking. “I think morale is low” is a hard thing to act on. The Spotify Squad Health Check turns that vague unease into something you can see: a wall of green, yellow, and red that tells your team, at a glance, exactly where to put its energy next.

The Spotify Squad Health Check is a lightweight self-assessment where a team rates itself on a set of plain-language dimensions using a traffic light: green (“this is going well”), yellow (“some problems”), or red (“this really needs attention”).

What makes it different from a typical survey is how each dimension is written. Every card is a polarized pair — a healthy “green” statement on one side and an unhealthy “red” statement on the other. Instead of a faceless 1-to-5 scale, you’re choosing between two concrete realities. For Speed, green reads “We get stuff done quickly — no waiting, no delays,” and red reads “We never seem to get done with anything; we keep getting stuck or interrupted.” Reading those two poles side by side makes your gut answer obvious.

It’s built for agile teams, and it’s deliberately fast. A squad can run it in a single session, and because everyone votes, the result reflects the whole team rather than one loud voice or a manager’s hunch. You’re not chasing a precise score. You’re surfacing a shared picture of where things stand — and, just as importantly, where people disagree about where things stand. A card that comes back half-green and half-red is a conversation waiting to happen.

Use it when you want a quick, visual, low-ceremony pulse: a recurring check every few sprints, a temperature read after a rough release, or a fresh start for a newly formed team.

In 2014, Spotify was scaling fast and trying to keep dozens of autonomous squads healthy without drowning them in process. Two coaches, Henrik Kniberg and Kristian Lindwall, wanted a way for squads to self-assess and visualize where to improve — something teams would actually find useful rather than a top-down audit.

They published the model on the Spotify Engineering blog in September 2014, and released it under a Creative Commons license so anyone could use and adapt it. That openness is a big reason it spread: the cards have been copied, translated, and remixed by agile teams worldwide, and you’ll find printable decks and digital versions everywhere.

A couple of things are worth getting right, because they often get garbled online. First, credit belongs to both Kniberg and Lindwall — it’s frequently attributed to Kniberg alone (he’s the better-known name from the “Spotify model” engineering-culture videos), but Lindwall was an equal author of the health check itself. Second, the canonical deck has 10 cards. Some teaching variants and reprinted decks show 11, but the original published model is ten.

One honest caveat: the “Spotify model” was a snapshot of how one company worked at one moment, not a framework Spotify sells or even uses unchanged today. The Squad Health Check survived because it’s genuinely useful and easy to adapt — treat it as a flexible starting point, not gospel.

The model’s ten cards each name one dimension of squad health. We’ve organized them under Parabol’s five team health categories — Psychological safety, Dependability, Structure & clarity, Meaning, and Impact — which happen to be the same five dynamics Google’s Project Aristotle identified as the markers of effective teams. Mapping the cards this way shows you which parts of team health the model covers well, and where you might want to round it out.

Below, each card is given as its green (healthy) statement — the wording you’d want your squad to agree with. These statements are reproduced from Spotify’s Creative Commons publication.

A quick flag before the questions: three cards — Easy to Release, Tech Quality, and Speed — are written for software teams. If you’re running this with a non-engineering team (marketing, design, operations), treat those three as optional. Swap them out or reword them to fit the work you actually ship.

\Software-specific — optional for non-engineering teams.*

These cards ask whether your squad is a place people enjoy and can lean on. When this is green, people speak up, ask for help, and actually like showing up.

Dependability is about being able to count on the team — and, for software squads, on the way work flows from idea to production. When these are red, everything feels slow and fragile.

This card checks whether the way you work actually suits the work you do — your process, ceremonies, and ways of getting things done.

These cards get at purpose and autonomy: whether the work is interesting, whether the squad controls its own direction, and whether people know why they’re here.

This card asks the bottom-line question: is the work landing? When it’s green, the squad is proud of what it ships and stakeholders are happy too.

Notice the gaps. The model is strongest on Meaning and on the day-to-day texture of agile work, and lighter on, say, deep interpersonal trust. If you want a fuller picture of psychological safety, it pairs naturally with other models (see Related models below).

The mechanics are simple, which is the point. Here’s a reliable way to do it.

Make it the team’s check, not yours. This is a self-assessment. Frame it as the squad taking its own pulse, not a performance review. If people think the results feed an evaluation, you’ll get green-washing.

Vote first, discuss second. Have everyone rate each card green, yellow, or red on their own before anyone talks. Doing it independently — and ideally anonymously — keeps one confident voice from anchoring the room and gives quieter members real influence.

Look for spread, not just averages. A card that’s solidly yellow across the team is useful. A card that’s half green and half red is more useful — it means people are experiencing the same squad completely differently, and that gap is where the richest conversation lives. Don’t average it away.

Talk about the reds and the splits. You won’t fix ten dimensions at once. Pick the one or two cards that are reddest or most divided, and use the squad’s own words to dig into why. The cards are conversation starters; the value is in the discussion they unlock.

Run it on a cadence and track the trend. A single snapshot tells you where you are. Running it every few sprints tells you whether you’re getting better. Watching a card climb from red to yellow to green over time is far more motivating than any one-off score — and it’s the early warning system that catches problems before they become burnout or attrition.

The Squad Health Check is one of the frameworks that shaped how we think about team health. Parabol’s Team Health check lets your team rate how you’re doing across five research-backed categories — psychological safety, dependability, structure & clarity, meaning, and impact — as a quick, recurring, anonymous pulse, then turns the results into a conversation.

Try Parabol Health Check

If the Squad Health Check is a good fit, these sibling models pair well with it — and the Team Health Check Tool hub collects them all.

Who created the Spotify Squad Health Check?

It was created at Spotify by Henrik Kniberg and Kristian Lindwall, and published on the Spotify Engineering blog in September 2014 under a Creative Commons license. It’s often credited to Kniberg alone, but both coaches authored it.

How many cards are in the Squad Health Check?

The canonical deck has 10 cards: Fun, Support, Easy to Release, Tech Quality, Speed, Suitable Process, Learning, Pawns or Players, Mission, and Value. Some reprinted or teaching versions show 11, but the original published model is ten.

Can non-software teams use it?

Yes. Most cards apply to any team. Three of them — Easy to Release, Tech Quality, and Speed — are written for software squads, so reword or drop those if your team doesn’t ship code.

What do the colors mean?

Each card is rated on a traffic light: green means it’s going well, yellow means there are some problems, and red means it needs real attention. Each card pairs a healthy “green” statement against an unhealthy “red” one, so you’re choosing between two concrete descriptions rather than a vague number.

How often should we run it?

There’s no fixed rule, but a check every few sprints works well. The point isn’t a one-time score — it’s watching the trend, so you can see whether the squad is getting healthier over time.

Is it a validated, scientific instrument?

No, and it doesn’t claim to be. It’s a practical facilitation tool for sparking honest conversation. If you want research-backed measures, pair it with models like Project Aristotle or Amy Edmondson’s psychological safety work.

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