Team foundations check
You do not need to be technical to answer these. Either the foundations exist or they don't. Ask the team — or walk the board and the last few releases yourself.
The team has a written definition of done, and people actually use it.
Someone other than the author reviews changes before they ship, most of the time.
At least two people can release to production.
Someone can name who owns deploy, CI, and 'production is down'.
Automated checks run on every change, and the team would notice if they went red.
A new hire could ship a small change in week one without a two-day download from whoever knows everything.
Work in progress is visible to the team, not trapped in private branches and DMs.
Everything important waits on one person — reviews, releases, or decisions.
The team has killed or simplified a rule in the last quarter — or looked and nothing deserved to die.
When production misbehaves, there is a default path that isn't 'message the hero and hope'.
0 / 10
This is the usual mess of a team that grew faster than its habits. Start with done, review, and CI.
- Get a written Definition of Done into the repo. Use the free generator — do not start with a 30-page wiki.
- Make review the default on anything hard to undo. A template beats a speech.
- Automated checks on every change are the first automation, not the fifth.
The Engineering Starter Kit turns that list into a playbook and files you can install. $99 beta