The importance of the human element in delivering great software is sometimes overlooked, as is the relationship between team health and team performance. Just like physical health checks, team checkups are important. Let's look at some factors that can affect team health and how you can evaluate the important metrics.

There are work items that will give the team an operational boost and perhaps avoid a crisis, but that never make it to the top of the priority list—like build and deployment improvements, or paying down technical debt. For enabling work that is valuable but too invisible to be a priority, consider breaking it down.

Saturday Night Live has delivered iconic, award-winning content and thrilled its audience for more than four decades. The practices used to deliver this sketch comedy television show every week actually have quite a bit in common with the practices of agile businesses. It's all about continuously, reliably delivering value.