Team Health · New in Parabol
Team health checks that lead somewhere
Research-backed questions. Anonymous answers. Trends over time. And the retro to act on them — all in the tool your team already meets in.
Join 700,000+ People Improving Team Performance
A two-minute check. A conversation that counts.
A Parabol team health check is five anonymous questions, one per research-backed category, that a team answers in about two minutes. It runs as its own recurring meeting or as a phase inside your retro, and the questions rotate every cycle so there’s no survey fatigue. Team Health is included in the Team and Enterprise plans, and the demo needs no sign-up.
STEP 1Pick a question pack
Choose Everything Bagel or a validated instrument like Gallup Q12. Schedule it weekly, fortnightly or per sprint — or attach it to your retro.
STEP 2Answer five questions, anonymously
One question per category on a 1–5 scale, with an optional comment. About two minutes. Slack and in-app nudges reach anyone who hasn’t answered.
STEP 3Reveal, discuss, act
Scores auto-reveal at close, with change since last check and a five-check trend. Talk it through in the thread and leave with tasks.
Grounded in research
Five categories that predict how teams perform
Parabol’s built-in question bank maps to the five dynamics Google’s Project Aristotle found in its most effective teams. Every score rolls up to a category, so leads reason about the thing that matters — not 40 disconnected numbers.
Read the research behind the categories →- Psychological Safety
- “If I make a mistake on this team, it is not held against me.”
- Dependability
- “When my teammates say they’ll do something, they follow through.”
- Structure & Clarity
- “I know what’s expected of me, and the goals for my work are clear.”
- Meaning
- “The work I do for our team is personally meaningful to me.”
- Impact
- “I can see the difference our team’s work makes.”
Start from a validated instrument — or write your own
Pick a pack, preview exactly which five questions your first meeting will ask, and start a recurring series in one click.
- Everything Bagel — Parabol’s balanced default across all five categories
- Gallup Q12, Edmondson’s Psychological Safety and Hackman’s Team Diagnostic Survey
- Spotify Squad Health Check and Atlassian Team Health Monitor
- Add your own questions — AI files each one under the right category
Anonymous by design, not by promise
Honest answers need a real guarantee. Team Health enforces one at every step.
- Individual scores are never shown to anyone — results reveal only when the check closes
- Anonymous comments are reworded by AI so nobody is recognized by how they write
- Results stay hidden below a minimum number of respondents
- Team leads can collect responses without submitting their own
The health check that ends with a task, not a dashboard
A low score is only useful if something happens next. Because Team Health lives beside your retros, discussions and task board, the follow-through is one click away — no export, no second tool.
- Discuss where the numbers came from
- Every category result has a discussion thread. Anonymous comments arrive already reworded, so the conversation starts from substance.
- Leave with tasks, synced to your backlog
- Create a task on the result and push it to Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Linear or Azure DevOps — the same integrations your retros already use.
- Watch the change next cycle
- Each reveal shows the change against the previous check, so the team sees whether what they tried actually moved the score.
Team Health across the whole organization
Organization-wide Team Health reporting (coming soon) will let leaders responsible for many teams see participation, category scores and change since last check for every team in one report — with the same anonymity floor the meeting enforces. Where to look first, without ranking anyone.
Planned for the Enterprise plan.
Why buy a dedicated team-health tool?
You don’t need to. Standalone engagement platforms measure. Parabol measures and then runs the retro, the discussion and the follow-up — for the same per-seat price you’d pay for meetings alone.
- 1 tool
Not one more login
Health checks, retros, standups, estimation and documentation in the place your team already meets. Adoption is the hard part of any survey — you’ve already done it.
- $8
Per active user, per month
Team Health is included in the Team plan alongside unlimited teams, AI meeting summaries and private teams. No separate engagement-platform contract.
- 0 exports
From score to action
Results become discussion topics and tasks without leaving the meeting. Dedicated tools stop at the dashboard.
- Open source
Auditable, self-hostable
Keep sensitive people data on your own infrastructure if you want it — including on-premise hosting for regulated and public-sector teams.
Healthy teams are productive teams
“There are usually so many different topics and paths we could take the conversation down, but with Parabol, the time we have together is organized and endorsed/voted on by participants in real-time. It is also tremendously helpful from a documentation standpoint with the digest at the end that goes to participants’ emails.”
Sarah Dempsey
Marketing Manager – Developer Relations, Sonatype
“Using Parabol, our teams are getting more consistent velocity in their sprints, their committed versus planned is more consistent, and their effort is more in line with what they’re setting out to do. It’s made a massive difference. Our retrospective and sprint planning meetings are more consistent, productive, and enjoyable. It keeps our meetings flowing, no matter who is leading them.”
David Murphy
Engineering Director, Ebury
“I have been using Parabol for retrospectives for several years and with multiple teams. The icebreakers and various retro templates help foster new conversations, and keep our meetings fun and engaging. Parabol is the most comprehensive, yet simple tool I have found”
Daniela Williams
Engineering Manager, Trimble
Learn the frameworks behind the questions
Where each instrument came from, the real questions it asks, and how it maps to Parabol’s five categories.
Read Team Health 101- Google Project AristotleThe study behind the five categories
- Psychological SafetyEdmondson’s validated 7-question survey
- Team Diagnostic SurveyHackman’s enabling conditions
- Gallup Q1212 questions that predict engagement
- Spotify Squad Health CheckThe traffic-light workshop
- Atlassian Team Health Monitor8 attributes, rated out loud
- Five Dysfunctions of a TeamLencioni’s trust-to-results pyramid
- Google Project OxygenWhat great managers do
- SCARFFive social drivers of threat and reward