Setting up a survey for a new team - theliberators/columinity.docs GitHub Wiki

This step-by-step guide explains how to set up a survey for a new team in Columinity. We created a wizard to simplify this process while building a strong foundation for your team's continuous improvement.

Who is this guide for?

New teams who have not run surveys before with Columinity
Teams on our "Free"-plan. Teams are typically created directly from the Teams Dashboard on our paid plans.

1. Start the wizard

ℹ️ Tip: Create buy-in with the team before you start with Columinity. People are often understandably wary of surveys, so getting them on board first improves the chances of success considerably. Review how we protect anonymity and privacy if your teams have questions about this.

Go to https://questionnaire.columinity.com. It is also possible to create a new team directly from the Teams Dashboard if your company is on a paid plan, but we'll assume the wizard in this go.
Click "Start" to begin.
Review and accept the terms of use.
Choose the "Advanced setup" to see all the steps below. If you want to leave more decisions to us, choose "Quick setup". The "Quick Setup" does not ask for improvement goals, topic selection, personalization and invitees.

2. About your team

Next, tell us about your team.

Choose a descriptive name for your team. We use this in the team report.
Choose the most relevant type of team. Later in the wizard, we will use "Team type" to recommend relevant scientific models and topics. If you don't know, choose "Other".
Provide an email address to notify you when functional events occur, such as when someone completes the survey for your team or when you set a reminder to re-survey your team. If you don't provide an email address, you must track this yourself. You can optionally sign up for our newsletter.
Click "Next" when you're ready. You can always go back to change settings later.

3. Choose improvement goals

Now, it's time to consider what you want to achieve with Columinity and your team. We can recommend relevant topics or scientific models if we know your goals. More importantly, Columinity exists to help your team improve continuously, which benefits from a clear goal.

ℹ️ Tip: Improvement goals change over time. You can always change your team's improvement goal from your Team Report.

Choose up to three relevant goals for your team. The fewer, the better. If you don't have clear goals, choose "We don't know yet".
Write down your improvement goal in the text field. We display this in the Team Report, which is visible to your team members. It is a great way to help your team keep focus on what they are improving toward.
Click "Next" when you're ready. You can always go back.

4. Select scientific model

Next, we will choose the scientific model to apply to your team. Columinity offers multiple science-based models that measure factors relevant to team effectiveness. Not all models apply to all kinds of teams and improvement goals. You may also prefer one model over others.

Select the relevant model for your team. Click "More information" to learn about each model.
If you don't know which model to choose, use the one we recommend. The "Teamwork Quality"-model is relevant to any team, whereas the "Agile Team Effectiveness"-model is primarily relevant to teams that use Agile methodologies to some extent.
Click "Next" when you're ready. You can always go back.

ℹ️ Tip: You can use different models for the same team by starting. Although each survey can only measure factors from one model at a time, you can run multiple surveys over time to collect a more comprehensive view of your team.

5. Select topics

With the model selected, you can now fine-tune the topic included in the survey.

ℹ️ Tip: We recommend balancing completeness and accuracy on the one hand with survey duration on the other end. While more questions make the survey more accurate and comprehensive, it can also tire participants. If the survey is too long, consider splitting it into separate scans. You can always measure some topics now and the others next month. Columinity will intelligently combine them in the reporting.

Choose a predefined questionnaire. The "Focus" questionnaires are short and focused on specific areas. Choose "Let me choose" to select topics yourself. If you don't know or this is your first survey, we recommend "Full diagnostic" or "Baseline" to set a good baseline measure to compare against.
Click "Advanced view" to customize the selected topics further. Some topics are only asked of team members, stakeholders, or supporters.
Based on your selection, Columinity estimates the time it will take team members, stakeholders, and supporters to complete their version of the survey. The accuracy is also calculated and depends on the number of questions (fewer is less accurate).
Click "Next" when you're ready. You can always go back.

6. Personalize the survey

You can now personalize the invitation for the survey. The invitation is shown in the email invites and at the start of the study, but only for team members. For stakeholders and supporters, we use a generic invitation.

Enter a personalized invitation (or leave it empty to use default).
Click "Next" when you're ready. You can always go back.

7. Invite team members, stakeholders, and supporters

There are two ways to invite team members, stakeholders, and supporters to fill in surveys for your team.

The most straightforward approach is to let Columinity send invites by email to team members, stakeholders, and supporters. Columinity will track who has participated so you can send reminders to those who haven't.
Alternatively, you can use the "sharing links" we provide once the survey is created and make them available on your team's Discord, Slack, or workspace. The advantage of these links is that you don't need to provide the email addresses of members, but Columinity won't be able to track participation. You can also mix both approaches by inviting some directly (like your team members) and sharing a link with your stakeholders.

If you want to invite by email, follow the steps below. Otherwise, you can estimate how many people you would like to participate with the invite links and move to the next page.

Provide email addresses of team members.
Provide email addresses of stakeholders. These are the people who benefit directly from your work as a team. For product teams, these are typically users, customers, or internal stakeholders. For non-product teams, it may be harder to determine. Ask yourself: "Who outside this team sleeps well when our team does well? And who sleeps badly when our team isn't doing well?"
Provide email address of supporters. These are the people who are supporting the team to be effective. Typically, these are people in a management position, team coaches, and so on.
Finally, estimate the total number of people that will participate. This allows Columinity to calculate a "participation rate" for your team. The goal is not a hard limit so that more people can participate but also fewer.

8. Set a repeat frequency

Columinity is designed to help you measure and improve your team continuously. After all, continuous improvement is something you do all the time, and not once or annually. We recommend using Columinity periodically, typically once per month, to get a sense of trends. Mix and match models and topics to keep the surveys fresh. Columinity intelligently combines the results from different surveys into one ongoing picture of your team.

Choose a frequency for Columinity to remind you. This email is sent to the "notification email" under "Your team".
Click "Next" when you're ready. You can always go back.

9. Review and finalize

Finally, review the settings under "Summary" make any changes you want, and click "Confirm" to create your team. Once confirmed, any email invites will be sent out automatically. You will be redirected to a confirmation page. Your survey is now ready for your new team. Now it's time to wait for people to fill out the survey.