What Makes Columinity A “Unique” Product?

With Columinity (formerly Scrum Team Survey), we developed a product to help teams continuously improve based on scientific insights. Organizations can diagnose one or many teams, receive extensive feedback, and resolve broader company-wide issues.

A question we frequently receive is:

“So, what makes Columinity unique? What’s the difference with other surveys, diagnostic tools, or health radars?”

It’s a surprisingly tricky question to answer. Mainly because we hadn’t done any market research before we decided to develop Columinity. We spent zero time studying the features of potential competitors. This probably goes against all rules of product development, but we (mostly Christiaan Verwijs) had a laser-sharp idea of what features to build. We didn’t want to get distracted and influenced by similar products. Even today, two years after our product development endeavor started, we haven’t invested any time in exploring the market.

Consequently, it’s impossible to state Columinity’s ‘unique selling points.’ I have a hunch, but a different product likely uses a similar feature or principle. To quote William Ralph Inge: “What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.”

“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” — William Ralph Inge

So, taking these constraints in mind, here’s what I believe makes Columinity a unique product to help teams improve. Let’s start with a 1-minute video that explains the essence of Columinity.

1. A team-first approach

In our philosophy, teams come first. We developed Columinity to empower teams to take control of their continuous improvement. We’ve been part of high-performing teams, coached and trained them, and we would like everyone to experience what that’s like, too.

As such, teams are in the driving seat of using Columinity. Only teams can invite their stakeholders and supporters (managers, leaders, and coaches) to share their opinions. It’s up to the team to identify improvements and turn them into actions. All our workshops (Retrospective templates) are designed from the teams' perspective, and our automatically generated recommendations are made actionable to support teams in continuously improving.

Most importantly, we understand that time is a team’s most precious possession. Teams don’t likely get excited about questionnaires, especially if they take 30 minutes to complete and don’t result in meaningful feedback. We took this experience to heart and focused on offering enough value to justify the time invested.

2. A focus on building trust and psychological safety

Focusing on building trust and psychological safety is essential for successfully using Columinity. Teams should feel comfortable expressing their opinions and providing honest feedback. Without these factors, teams may hesitate to engage with the survey or share their thoughts, resulting in incomplete or biased data. When teams trust that their responses will be valued and their identities protected, they are more likely to provide accurate and detailed information. Psychological safety allows teams to share their perspectives openly, leading to more insightful data.

Some teams may fear negative consequences, such as retaliation or judgment, when participating in a tool like Columinity. Establishing trust and psychological safety helps minimize these concerns, assuring teams that their responses will be used constructively and not against them.

This is why we recommend doing a kickoff. Work with the teams, stakeholders, and supporters to clarify the purpose of Columinity and how the data will be used. More importantly, clarify how the data will NOT be used against them. In larger organizations, create a support team that is available to answer questions related to the survey and explore potential worries participants might have.

3. A foundation of scientific research

Teams are part of complex systems. It is rarely obvious where and how to improve. The model behind the Columinity was created to bring an evidence-based perspective to this question. Data from over 2.000 teams was used to identify which factors contribute the most to their effectiveness. These are stakeholder concern, responsiveness, continuous improvement, team autonomy, and management support. Each core factor represents several lower-order factors. We published a peer-reviewed scientific paper with Prof. Daniel Russo in the academic journal “Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology” (TOSEM).

Our model provides direction on assessing, diagnosing, and supporting Agile teams. It shows which areas are well-developed in teams and which need work, offering a focus in a world with thousands of options, approaches, and methods. Using our peer-reviewed academic research, teams can identify effective interventions and improve the areas that matter most.

4. Actionable feedback

Columinity offers transparency on what works well in your team and what can be improved. This transparency is only helpful when it results in powerful conversations and clear improvement actions. Two principles drive how we offer feedback to teams. The first is that change follows from conversations in teams. The second is that teams should be in control, not well-meaning coaches or managers.

These principles are at work everywhere. For example, we offer ‘Do-It-Yourself Workshops’ to help teams improve in specific areas. Each workshop includes a detailed facilitation guide that ensures a good conversation and useful outcomes. We also suggest ‘Focus Areas,’ which are the three factors we expect your teams to gain the most. They are those factors where your teams deviate more strongly from the benchmark than other factors. The third type of feedback is ‘Quick Tips.’ These highly practical improvements should be easily implemented quickly and without permission. You can use them to drive incremental change under challenging environments or inspire improvement.

Ultimately, all your improvement actions aim to make your team more effective. We recommend periodically inspecting the results with the teams to see what is improving. This allows you to improve how you improve, and it also creates good opportunities for shared celebration.

5. Perspectives from stakeholders and supporters

With Columinty, teams can invite their stakeholders/customers to offer their perspectives on team outcomes. This is an excellent opportunity to learn and reflect. Stakeholders can share how much value they receive from the team and how satisfied they are with, e.g., the release frequency, the quality, and the delivered features. This is essential information for the team to improve in the areas where it matters and reduce bias. A team can be happy with its performance, but what if your most important stakeholders think differently?

Examples from the stakeholder's questionnaire are (score 1–7):

What this team delivers is of high quality.

When the team delivers a new version, it is usually free of serious bugs.

I have a good sense of what this team is working on.

The frequency of new releases is good enough for my needs.

I am satisfied with the value that this team delivers.

Columinity also allows supporters (managers, leaders, and coaches) to help teams remove impediments. Teams can indicate where they’re stuck and where support is needed. Supporters can use their knowledge, network, and mandate to remove obstacles effectively.

Examples from the supporters’ questionnaire are (score 1–7):

People in management positions help this team work with Agile.

I encourage this team to improve their processes, technologies, and work methods.

I remove obstacles that make it hard for this team to release (more) frequently.

I encourage this team to make their own choices rather than being told what to do.

I frequently interact with this team to learn where they need my support.

6. A wide variety of industry benchmarks

Our database contains extensive data from more than 12.500 teams worldwide. This offers a great opportunity to compare yourself with various industry benchmarks. You can choose from many benchmarks, like the top 100 most effective teams, teams in your sector, teams that use the same scaling framework, or teams located in the same region or company size as yours.

These benchmarks can come from your team’s data from last year or other groups of teams. They can serve as ambitious and inspiring targets for improvement. Be careful; while benchmarks can provide valuable insights and a helpful frame of reference for your team, it’s important to remember that every team is unique and operates in its environment.

Using benchmarks as a starting point for conversations and as a guide for asking the right questions to uncover insights specific to your team is essential. Ask questions like “Do these differences match with what we observe?” or “Is this a difference that we feel matters?” to ensure you’re considering the bigger picture and not just fixating on numbers.

7. Aggregated results of multiple teams

The free version of Columinity is focused on individual teams. In my opinion, the real fun (and value!) starts when you aggregate and analyze the results of multiple teams. This is possible via the Teams Dashboard, which is available with a subscription. It’s ideal for identifying organizational issues and for teams to request help on common problems. It also drives improvement across many teams, with stakeholders, and with proactive support from management.

In addition to the Teams Dashboard, we offer the Coaching Center (learn about it in this quick tour). It allows you to extend further to entire business units, branches, or even separate organizations (i.e. if you’re a coaching agency). The Coaching Center allows an organization-level data grouping and makes organizational-wide patterns visible.

With the Teams Dashboard and the Coaching Center, teams can compare results. Ideally, they reach out to each other to offer support. “Hey, what's your secret with the high release frequency?” “How do you collaborate with stakeholders?” “What impediment do you exactly with value focus?”. Although we don’t measure productivity, we understand the results' sensibility. Especially if the organizational culture contradicts this level of transparency. Therefore, running a “principles workshop” and a “kickoff workshop” with the teams, management, and stakeholders is essential. It helps set expectations and clarify how the data will be used.

8. The product’s “engine”

Columinity allows teams to visualize their performance. We use a lot of data from individual participants and aggregate it into snapshots, teams, and even entire organizations. There are a lot of statistics and rules involved in that process, and we don’t want it to be a black box. So, this GitHub page describes how the results come about.

In short:

• For individual participants, we calculate the mean average for each factor based on the questions related to it.
• For teams, we calculate the median average from the factor scores of all individual participants for that team.
• For groups of teams, we calculate the mean average from the factor scores of all teams in the selection (their most recent measurement).
• We calculate the delta (improvement) by subtracting the current period's factor score from the previous period's factor score.

In addition, we aim to respect the following principles:

1. Present data on a scale that is meaningful to people
2. Reduce bias in the results as much as possible (e.g., social bias)
3. Prefer robust statistics over very sensitive statistics to avoid leading teams on goose chases (e.g., median versus mean)
4. Prefer statistics that include more data over less data (e.g., weighing of averages versus not weighing)

This makes Columinity way more than a simple checklist or a superficial survey. There’s actual statistical and mathematical brainpower involved! :)

9. How we handle data

Hopefully, it's not a USP, but we try to be the best kid in the class when handling data. We purposefully collect as little personal information as possible. Survey participants don’t need to enter personal details at all, and teams can opt out of having their names displayed on the Teams Dashboard. We adhere to the European General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR). This is the most robust protection of your privacy on the planet. For a more detailed description, check our Privacy Policy and legal terms.

Closing words

In this blog post, I described Columinity’s unique selling points. Obviously, I’m biased, and because we don’t research any competitors, I don’t know if it’s truly unique. I hope it triggered you to learn more about Columinity and how it can help your team(s) improve based on scientific insights. It’s free for individual teams. So give it a try and expand from there!