High performance, poor morale, and the Niko-niko calendar

I was introduced to Niko-niko calendars by Max Webster at Niko Niko. Basically, they are a way of tracking a team’s mood over time. At the end of the day, team members put in a smile/frown/whatever face indicating their mood. You can see when people were happy or sad and coordinate that with other events (what tasks they were working on, what happened at work, etc.).

Initially, I thought this was a pretty useless metric. What good leader or manager wouldn’t always know this information? I can tell if things are going well because I speak to the team regularly as I make changes. But it can be useful to track mood for when things get lost in the cracks or regress. It’s also useful as an outside-facing metric, to show people how their decisions impact the team. The more I thought about it, the more I wished I had known about Niko-niko calendars earlier!

I would only consider Niko-niko effective on an already well-performing and generally happy team. It is a pretty high-level metric, so if people are unhappy for many reasons, I doubt you’ll get much useful data. So, with that, how about some scenarios that I would have used a Niko-niko calendar for, had I known about them?

• Process tweaks like shortening sprints or requiring more code reviews. People are resistant at first but usually accept it. Is this because they get happier over time? Or because they do not feel empowered to change things back?
• Changing the branching/integration strategy. At previous jobs we seemed to have a new one every six months. At my current job there are fans and detractors of git flow. Does morale go down or stay the same when integrations happen more often? Is this better or worse depending on the branching/integration strategy?
• How much do people actually hate planning days, and what can we do to improve them?
• How painful are releases? People should be happiest, not unhappy, before and after a release!
• Does a team hate what it’s doing? How much does dumping work on a team impact morale? Do they not believe in the product or are expectations out of whack? What can be done to help the team “own” the project rather than resent it?
• How does changing team composition cause morale to be affected?

I’m sure there are more, but I thought the idea of using a Niko-niko chart could be interesting. I won’t have a chance to try one out for a while, but will post a followup after I do.

I wrote this draft a couple months ago and finished it recently. Since then I’ve seen a few other apps in a similar space, such as Know Your Company and Know My Team, that focus on tracking morale. I think it’s a good trend. And it’s a reminder that what may appear as a management fad can often have deep, established roots.