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Instruments

The RAD Assessment

Competence, not compliance. 36 team competencies across five domains, each scored on the same five-level ladder, from beginner to master. You can’t fly by feel in the clouds, so we read the instruments first.

Take the team self-assessmentBook a facilitated assessment

One ladder, four lenses

Five levels of team competence.

Every rating means the same thing everywhere in the assessment. A team answering “Sustainable” is describing an Adaptive organization, competent people, a self-managing team and autonomous trust. Pick a level to see its exit criteria.

3

Adaptive

Consistent practices, automated across the whole solution lifecycle

Competence: Competent

Performs independently and handles breakdowns without a rulebook. Peers in the domain say they perform well.

Team: Self-managing teams

No manager managing the backlog. The team works with a product owner on priority, with a focus on flow.

Autonomous trust

Teams repeatedly deliver budget, schedule, quality and scope without oversight, and without breaking other parts of the organization.

Exit criteria

  • ✓ Business trust established
  • ✓ Consistent flow
  • ✓ Impediment- and dependency-free work items
  • ✓ Legacy remediated and test-protected
  • ✓ Self-organizing teams

Typical practices

  • ▸ Personas & story mapping
  • ▸ Regular PO-led demos
  • ▸ Ratified Definition of Done & quality standards
  • ▸ Push-button deployments
  • ▸ Fully populated automated test harness

Organization

Take the work to the team. Product, not project, mindset: teams persist while projects come and go.

Driver

Effectiveness oriented: skill acquisition, team synergy

Below the line

Two patterns sit below “Beginner.” They describe behaviors in a domain, not people, and they show up in morale and impediment answers long before anyone names them.

Bull in a china shop

Doesn’t recognize the domain they’re acting in, and produces breakdowns others can see but they can’t. The leader who derails a working session with irrelevant questions and jokes.

The jerk

Knows the domain, ignores how the people practicing it assess their actions, and keeps producing the same breakdowns without agreeing to learn.

Whole-team view

What each level looks like, discipline by discipline.

Discipline1 Beginning2 Operating3 Adaptive4 Quantified5 Innovating
EnvironmentsDeveloper sandboxes, manual deploymentsContinuous integration, dedicated Dev/Int/QA, versioned configsPush-button deploy and rollback, same process everywhere, staging mirrors prodOrchestrated deploys, continuous performance monitoring, tested rollbacksContinuous value delivery, multiple automated prod deploys a day
Customer experienceNo customer feedback loopBeta testing after release, feedback in future releasesUsers in alpha/beta, feedback incorporated during developmentCX testing tracked and built in during developmentRegular direct customer testing of prototypes
DevOpsManual builds, no artifact managementBuilds automated and recreated from source controlEvery commit builds; dependencies managed; reusable scriptsBuilds never left broken; build metrics big and visibleIntegration problems retro’d and automated away
Systems analysisDocument-heavy, big design up front, managers commit for the teamMoving to stories, prioritized backlog and refinementStory mapping, personas, flexible-scope backlog, yesterday’s weatherVelocity tracked, whole-team refinement, range estimatesCustomer feedback integrated during development
EngineeringTest after development, waterfallTest-first unit testsTDD, SOLID, the rest of the test pyramidEmergent design, high coverage, highly modular codeEmergent design and platforms; tech debt planned in every release
QualityManual testingAutomated tests created during developmentFull test pyramid, guided exploratory testing, shift to preventionCentralized quality metrics with drill-downQuality owned by the team; greenfield work is defect-free

“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.” George Box

Team self-assessment

36 competencies. Be honest. Nobody’s grading.

Pick the description that best fits your team today, not the one in the slide deck. Skip anything you can’t answer. Answers stay in your browser. For the real thing, every team member answers separately and we talk about the spread, which is where the good stuff is.

0 of 36 answered
Team Dynamics (4)

AgilityHow far has your team progressed in adopting RAD?

MoraleHow would you rate team morale?

TeamingWhere is your team on the Tuckman scale?

NormsIs there a working agreement, and how well is it followed?

Team Structure (9)

Team sizeHow big is your team?

FocusHow are people allocated?

ContinuityHow persistent is team membership?

Cross-functionalityAre all the skills needed dedicated to the team?

CollocationHow well is the cross-functional team collocated?

AutonomyHow well has self-organization spread through the team?

PaceDoes the team maintain a sustainable pace?

Cross-teamingHow good is cross-team collaboration?

ImpedimentsHow well does the team handle impediments?

Product (10)

Delivery speedHow fast does a story go from ready to done?

Cycle timeHow fast is concept to ready-to-release?

VisionHow well is the product vision communicated?

INVESTDo stories follow INVEST?

Definition of ReadyIs there a Definition of Ready?

Definition of DoneIs there a Definition of Done?

Story sizingAre stories appropriately sized?

Backlog refinementIs the backlog properly refined?

Vertical slicesDo teams “travel light” with end-to-end slices?

WIPIs work in progress managed?

RAD Process Mechanics (6)

CadenceIs a team cadence (stand-ups, huddles) established and followed?

RetrospectivesDoes the team run regular, effective retros?

User storiesHow effectively are user stories used?

EstimationHow is estimating done?

Progress trackingHow is progress tracked and used for decisions?

DemosHow often are demos held, and how is stakeholder feedback used?

RAD Engineering Practices (7)

Software teams. Choose “Not applicable” for anything that doesn’t fit your work.

Emergent architectureIs architecture decided up front or just in time?

Testing integrationHow tightly is testing coupled to development?

Code qualityHow is code quality assured?

Code coverageHow much code is covered by automated tests?

Test automationHow automated and how frequent is testing?

Unit testingHow mature is unit testing?

Clean codeHow clean and SOLID is the code?

The facilitated assessment

Brief, assess, debrief. Like any good mission.

  1. STEP 1

    Brief

    Walk the team through the ladder and the competence language so everyone scores against the same picture.

  2. STEP 2

    Assess

    Every member answers privately. No anchoring on the loudest voice or the highest title.

  3. STEP 3

    Debrief

    Look at the spread. Where people disagree is where the real conversation (and the coaching plan) is.

  4. STEP 4

    Re-assess

    Repeat on a cadence and trend it. Progress you can show a sponsor, from evidence instead of vibes.