Spotify Health Check Retrospective: Moderation & Tips

Many teams use the Spotify Squad Health Check in retrospectives to identify early where collaboration, value creation or technology are faltering. Here you will find the moderation guide with concrete questions and templates for each Spotify dimension.

What Is the Spotify Health Check Model?

The Spotify Health Check creates visibility about the “health status” of your team. For this, the team evaluates statements from different categories on a traffic light scale. A deep insight into the model can be found here . If you are interested in the organizational structure with Squads, Tribes, Chapters and Guilds, read the overview of the Agile Spotify Model .

How to use the Spotify Health Check in retrospectives

How to integrate the Health Check into your retrospectives in a lean way Retrospective in:

1. Before the retro, the team evaluates the Spotify items via a short survey.
2. In the retro, you look together at the results (traffic light + trend).
3. You prioritize the most critical dimensions and derive measures.
4. Repeat after a few weeks to make progress visible.

For the pure method description you can also use the compact article on Spotify Health Check ; here you get the moderation-focused part.

If you prefer to see the contents as a video, here is the compact overview and 6 tips:

Play

The big advantages:

• Concrete items lower the inhibition threshold for honest feedback.
• Results are comparable over time and show trends.
• Teams can design retrospectives more independently and in a more targeted manner.

A clear moderation guide helps to ensure a successful introduction – see the sections below.

Moderation guide and retro templates

We bundle the Spotify items into four thematic retros plus a variant for all dimensions. This allows you to focus specifically and have enough time per topic.

You can answer the items either with a traffic light scale or with a Likert scale:

Spotify Health Check Retro: Team

Focus on collaboration, learning and support. Use the questions as conversation anchors and then decide which dimension you want to deepen.

🥳 Fun

🚥 Item

• We enjoy going to work and have a lot of fun working together.

💡 Moderation questions

What did you enjoy most about working on?What was the most boring part of the job lately?How could we make the job more fun or less boring?

🙏 Support

🚥 Item

• We always get great support and help when we ask for it.

💡 Moderation questions

In which situations did we get stuck due to lack of support?What support have we given to others inside and outside the team?What could have helped us, but we didn’t ask for it?

🤝 Teamwork

🚥 Item

• We are a great team that works well together.

💡 Moderation questions

When did our collaboration work particularly well recently?Where are we working at cross purposes or blocking each other?How do we make blockers transparent so that we can help each other faster?

💡 Learning

🚥 Item

• We are constantly learning many interesting things.

💡 Moderation questions

What type of task did we learn the most or least from?How much time do we take per week to learn?Which knowledge should be spread more widely in our team?

Spotify Health Check Retro: Organization

Ideal when it comes to mission, autonomy and freedom of choice.

🏁 Mission

🚥 Item

• We know exactly why we are here and can get excited about it.

💡 Moderation questions

Why are we here and does everyone agree on that?What questions about our common goals are still open?What makes our mission exciting and what is still missing to make it exciting for us?

♟ Pawn or player

🚥 Item

• We are in control of our own destiny! We decide what we build and how we build it.

💡 Moderation questions

In what situation did we feel like a peasant in a chess game?What guidelines do we have or should we have to prevent that?

Spotify Health Check Retro: Delivery

For teams that want to focus on delivery capability, processes, and stakeholder value.

🏎 Speed

🚥 Item

• We get things done really fast. No waiting, no delays.

💡 Moderation questions

Which of our topics have stalled during implementation? What were the main reasons for delays? What is a current example of rapid implementation?

🤖 Suitable process

🚥 Item

• Our way of working suits us perfectly.

💡 Moderation questions

What bothers us about the way we work? When was the last time we changed the way we work? Which proposed change was never implemented and why?

🏅 Value

🚥 Item

• We deliver great results! We are proud of it and our stakeholders are very satisfied.

💡 Moderation questions

What makes our stakeholders particularly happy? Which topics have not delivered the hoped-for benefits and are there patterns? What are our stakeholders currently most disappointed about?

Spotify Health Check Retro: Tech

Well suited if the focus is on release flow and code quality.

⌨️ Tech quality

🚥 Item

• We are proud of the quality of our code! It is clean, easy to read, and has good test coverage.

💡 Moderation questions

What aspects of our codebase are we particularly proud of? Which technical debts are potentially underestimated? How quickly did the newest team member become familiar with the codebase?

⚙️ Easy releasing

🚥 Item

• Releasing is easy, safe, painless, and largely automated.

💡 Moderation questions

When was the last time something went wrong during a release? What is currently the biggest pain point in our release process? What improvement to our release process would we all welcome?

Full Spotify Health Check

If you want to consider all 11 dimensions at once, plan enough time (90–120 minutes) and then consistently prioritize two to three areas for action.

Tips for conducting the Spotify Health Check online

• Adapt the model: Remove irrelevant dimensions and add missing aspects so that the check fits the team.
• Stay tuned: After two to three iterations, the items feel natural to the team – this is when the best insights emerge.
• Avoid changing tools: Use a setup that maps survey, evaluation, and retro in one go to save media disruptions.

Play

Try the Spotify Team Health Check Tool now directly

With Echometer, you can capture the health check, discuss the results in the retro, and document measures – all in one tool.

1. Send out survey: Create a team, select items, and send the survey. Answers are anonymous and provide traffic light plus trend.
2. Interactive online retro: As soon as answers are there, you start the retro and go through results and food for thought live.
3. Record measures: Document comments and actions directly per item, including comparison to previous results.
4. Automatic radar: The dashboard transparently displays the history of all Spotify dimensions at any time.

If you want to get started right away, click on one of the retro templates and start with the Spotify Team Health Check.

You will then receive a nice radar chart in Echometer to visualize the results of the Spotify Health Check:

We look forward to your experience reports on Echometer !