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We know the definition of some terms can vary, depending on the circumstances in which they are used. Here are some terms and their definitions, based on how we use them in reference to AgilityHealth®.

Retrospective

An AgilityHealth® retrospective is a 2-3 hour strategic session that aims to help individuals or teams reflect on their last quarter or release and develop a plan to improve during the next quarter or release. An AgilityHealth® retrospective is facilitated by a certified AgilityHealth® Facilitator (AHF).

Team members complete an assessment either prior to or during the retrospective. During the retrospective session, Facilitators will analyze the radar developed from the team's results and review the team's textual responses. Having real conversations about these items will allow the Facilitator and the team to build actionable growth plans to be worked on by the team and leadership over the next quarter.

AgilityHealth® Facilitator or AHF

A Facilitator plays a crucial role in the organization's utilization of AgilityHealth® by facilitating team retrospectives, helping the team to analyze the radar developed from the team's results and helping the team to develop a solid growth plan.

Assessment

Online assessments are taken by team members to gather their input on the team’s health and maturity. Results are anonymous and displayed on a radar with individual dots representing each team member’s answers. Textual responses are also gathered from the team members and displayed below the radar results for analysis by the team.

Team

A team is comprised of individuals who are assigned to take an assessment together.

Definition of a 'team' in AgilityHealth:

• Team Radars: The people engaged to get a piece of work from initiation to done; generally expected in an Agile environment to be 7-12 people. These people are added as Team Members in AgilityHealth.
• Talent Development: These radars are taken by individuals for 360 feedback on themselves in their roles; up to 20 individuals comprise a “team” in AgilityHealth for licensing. These people are added as Participants (Team Members) in AgilityHealth.

Multi-Team

A multi-team is comprised of teams, rolled up into a multi-team or team of teams. A multi-team is created to roll-up assessment results from various teams, so leadership can see radar results for teams of interest together. This also allows Leadership to pull in growth items into their backlog that have been marked as Organizational by teams.

Definition of a 'multi-team' in AgilityHealth:

• Program/ART/Team of Team Radars: The people engaged at the multi-team level in cross-functional dependencies and impediment removal; generally expected to be not more than 15 people. These people are added as Growth Team members in AgilityHealth.

Enterprise Team

An enterprise team is created to roll-up multi-teams into an enterprise-level view to see common themes throughout the organization. This also allows Executive Leadership to pull in growth items into their backlog that have been marked as Enterprise by Leadership when reviewing organizational growth items that need escalation.

Definition of an 'enterprise team' in AgilityHealth:

• Portfolio/Enterprise Radars: The people engaged in leading the transformation across both IT and the Business; generally expected to be less than 25 people. These people are added as Growth Team members in AgilityHealth.

N-Tier Team

An n-tier team can be created to roll-up enterprise or other n-tier teams into a higher-level view to see common themes throughout the organization. This feature is not enabled for companies by default. 

Team Tags

Tags are customizable attributes that can be used to organize your company within AgilityHealth®. Team Tags include things such as product line, program, portfolio, lines of business, methodology, work type, etc. and are used to link teams together, in order to roll their assessment results up into a multi-team or enterprise-team view.

Team Member Tags (Roles, Participant Groups)

Used to identify an individual’s role or other pertinent information within AgilityHealth®. These can be used to filter data within a specific team, as well as identify trends across teams among individuals in common roles.

• Role is the function or position each person holds on this team. Role tags will allow you to add additional roles to your company that can be assigned to team members. You will also be able to edit existing roles to update them to your company's specifications.
• Role tags also determine if team members receive the appropriate assessment questions (product owner vs. team members for the Team Confidence competency in our TeamHealth® Radar, for example). They are also important to ensure data at the multi-team roll-up level can be filtered for analysis.
• Participant Group tags will allow you to set general to specific tags related to the team member. This could be as easy as adding a Remote tag to show that the team member works from home or Europe to show that they are remote and part of the European team. This could also show that they are part of a Business Leadership team or the Support team. Participant Groups are usually the tags that are heavily customized based on the company’s needs.

Stakeholders

A Stakeholder is simply someone who has an interest in the team and their health. This could be Managers, Leaders, executives, team sponsors, etc. A Stakeholder will not have access to the assessment results, but if they are a Manager/Leader, the results may be shared with them during the Manager Debrief/Leadership Readout.

As part of our TeamHealth® assessment, a short assessment is sent to the Stakeholders of a team, usually a week or two prior to the retrospective session. The Stakeholder assessment is sent in advance so the results are available during the retrospective session.

Most of our team-based assessments do not have separate questions for the Stakeholders, they will be sent the same questions as the team in those cases.

Radar

Results from an AgilityHealth® Assessment are displayed on a Radar. The radar image has a summary view of all responses and a detailed view, plotting individual responses as dots on a scale.

The radar is broken into categories, called Dimensions, further broken into categories called Sub-Dimensions, further broken into categories called Competencies. The questions answered in the assessment are grouped by Competency.

Dimension

The major areas that we measure. Dimensions include Sub-Dimensions and Competencies.

Sub-dimension

Grouping of Competencies within a Dimension.

Competency

The specific areas that we measure, through one or more assessment questions.

High and Low Competencies/Consensus

Each dot on the radar results represents one person’s answer within a competency, but as the results of the assessment are anonymous, you will not know which dot belongs to a specific person. The shading between the dots indicates the range of answers. A wide range shows a lack of alignment, a narrow range indicates greater alignment. The 5 competencies with the highest consensus of agreement and the 5 competencies with the lowest consensus of agreement are displayed in an analytics table below the radar results. The table also displays the 5 competencies with the highest ratings from the compiled team’s answers, along with the 5 competencies with the lowest ratings from the compiled team’s answers. Learn how consensus is calculated here.

Growth Items (Team, Organizational and Enterprise)

A growth item is an item a team has decided during their retrospective to focus on improving over the next quarter or other chosen time period. Growth items are written like stories, and should also follow the SMART guidelines.

• A team growth item or TGI is something that can be resolved by the team themselves.
• An organizational growth item or OGI is a growth item the team needs Leadership to help them resolve.
• An enterprise growth item or EGI is a growth item Leadership needs to elevate to the highest level in the organization to help them resolve.

Growth Item Competency Targets

When creating a growth item during a retrospective, you will need to pick which Competency Target the growth item relates to best. This is a way to clearly identify what you are trying to impact when making improvements so that everyone working on the solution has the same goal in mind and so that you can test your assumptions about what will make a difference for team health and maturity.

Competency Targets also allow for the company to see over many teams, what areas need the most improvement and where Leadership can assist most.

Growth Portal

A resource within AgilityHealth® that allows teams and individuals to leverage the results of their assessment. Participants can analyze their results to see where they are now, decide where they want to go and use multiple resources from the Growth Portal to highlight what they need to do to get there. This guidance includes best practices, improvement tips, helpful downloadable resources, videos focused on Agile concepts and strategies, as well as opportunities to request help from internal or external coaches.

Growth Journey

If a team has taken multiple assessments, you can see trends over time to gain additional insights. The Growth Item Journey tabs display the average score for each dimension, sub-dimension and competency across all assessments within a selected time period, using the end date of each assessment.

Benchmarking

Allows companies to see how the results from their assessments at the Enterprise, Multi-Team and/or Team level compare to other companies within AgilityHealth® and to see how the results from Multi-Team and/or Team level assessments compare to other Multi-Team and/or Team level assessments within their own company. Benchmarking is a feature that is turned on/off by company and can be turned on/off for each level of results, at the company level as well. Companies can also decide if they want to participate in Global Benchmarking, so their results are able to be included with and benchmarked against all companies in AgilityHealth®, or they can choose to opt-out. Benchmarking is currently available for our TeamHealth®, DevOps and Enterprise Business Agility (EBA) Radars.