Engagement Health Check

Engagement Health Check

Assess the health of an ongoing consulting engagement across five dimensions. Produce a RAG status report, improvement backlog, and retrospective output that feeds the next cycle of delivery.

Overview

Regular health checks prevent engagements from quietly failing. Applied every sprint or month, this skill surfaces problems while they are still correctable and reinforces what is working.

Health Assessment Dimensions

Score each dimension: Green (on track), Amber (at risk, needs action), Red (failing, needs immediate intervention).

1. Delivery Health

Questions to assess:

• Is velocity stable or improving?
• Is the team meeting sprint goals?
• Are blockers being resolved within 24 hours?
• Is the scope stable, or is there uncontrolled scope creep?
• Is the critical path being protected?

Evidence to gather: Sprint completion rates, velocity chart, blocker log, scope change log.

2. Quality Health

Questions to assess:

• Is the defect rate increasing or decreasing sprint-on-sprint?
• Is test coverage growing with the codebase?
• Is technical debt being managed (not ignored)?
• Are production incidents decreasing?

Evidence to gather: Defect counts by sprint, coverage % trend, debt register changes, incident count.

3. Team Health

Questions to assess:

• Is the team engaged and motivated?
• Are skills being developed (not just tasks being executed)?
• Is knowledge being shared (bus factor reducing)?
• Is the team understaffed, overloaded, or well-balanced?

Evidence to gather: Team sentiment (1-10 quick survey), knowledge sharing activities, PR review distribution.

4. Relationship Health

Questions to assess:

• Is the client sponsor engaged and satisfied?
• Is communication happening at the right cadence?
• Are there unresolved concerns or tensions?
• Is the client receiving visible value each sprint?

Evidence to gather: Stakeholder meeting notes, decision log, any escalations or complaints.

5. Commercial Health

Questions to assess:

• Is budget burn on track with delivery progress?
• Is the remaining budget sufficient to complete the agreed scope?
• Are there change requests that need commercialising?
• Are there signals of renewal or expansion?

Evidence to gather: Budget tracker, forecast to complete, change request log.

Health Report Format

# Engagement Health Report: [Engagement Name]
Date: [YYYY-MM-DD] | Reporting Period: [Sprint/Month]

## Health Dashboard
| Dimension | Status | Trend | Key Finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery | 🟢/🟡/🔴 | ↑/→/↓ | [key finding] |
| Quality | 🟢/🟡/🔴 | ↑/→/↓ | [key finding] |
| Team | 🟢/🟡/🔴 | ↑/→/↓ | [key finding] |
| Relationship | 🟢/🟡/🔴 | ↑/→/↓ | [key finding] |
| Commercial | 🟢/🟡/🔴 | ↑/→/↓ | [key finding] |
| **Overall** | 🟢/🟡/🔴 | | |

## Key Findings
[3-5 bullet points on the most important findings]

## Improvement Actions
| Action | Dimension | Owner | Due | Expected Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [action] | [dimension] | [role] | [date] | [outcome] |

Retrospective Facilitation (4Ls)

Run a 4L retrospective to collect team input:

Liked: What worked well this sprint/period? Learned: What did we discover (good or bad)? Lacked: What was missing that would have helped? Longed for: What would we ideally have had?

For each item in Lacked and Longed for: produce an action item with an owner.

Additional Resources

• references/engagement-maturity-model.md — Maturity progression from AI-Assisted to AI-Autonomous
• assets/health-check-template.md — Blank health check template