Pressure Test
Pick a focus area
Method

What we're actually measuring.
And where the questions come from.

Pressure Test isn't an opinion. Each focus area maps to published research on how product teams actually deliver — DORA, Atlassian, Spotify, Google, Scrum.org — translated into seven questions you can answer in about two minutes.

Each area mixes three kinds of question — principle, behavioural anchor (what you actually did the last time it came up), and frequency — so a single off-click can't swing your read.

The frameworks behind the questions.

Every question maps to at least one of these published bodies of work.

DORA State of DevOps
Multi-year research linking specific delivery practices to business outcomes. The origin of deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, and MTTR as industry standard metrics.
↗
dora.dev
Google Project Aristotle
Google's internal study of what makes teams perform. Psychological safety, shared purpose, and clear structure predict team performance more reliably than individual talent.
↗
rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understand-team-effectiveness
Accelerate
Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim's research into what separates high-performing technology organisations from the rest. The academic foundation behind the DORA metrics.
↗
itrevolution.com/accelerate-book
Team Topologies
Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais on how to structure teams around fast flow. The most widely adopted modern framework for delivery team design.
↗
teamtopologies.com
Shape Up
Basecamp's delivery methodology. Fixed time, variable scope, no backlogs. A deliberately different take on how product work should move from idea to shipped.
↗
basecamp.com/shapeup
Scrum Guide
The canonical definition of Scrum: roles, events, and artifacts. Written by Schwaber and Sutherland, the originators of the framework.
↗
scrumguides.org

The diagnostic covers three areas.

When delivery breaks down, it almost always breaks down in one of three places. The questions in Pressure Test are designed to surface which one.

01

Delivery Foundations

The basics that quietly decide everything.

Does your team have the operational conditions that make reliable work possible? A single place where everything lives. Ceremonies that produce shared understanding, not just task lists. Leaders who can check what's happening without interrupting someone to ask. These aren't sophisticated practices. They're the floor. Without them, everything above is harder than it needs to be.

Research basis

DORA's research consistently finds that teams with strong delivery foundations ship more reliably and recover faster from failure. The Scrum Guide defines these practices as the minimum viable structure for empirical process control.

DORAScrum.org
02

Business Alignment

Shipping isn't the same as moving the metric.

Is your team's delivery connected to what the business actually needs? This area measures whether priorities are driven by outcomes rather than urgency, whether people can explain why this week's work matters, and whether there's any mechanism for knowing if what shipped actually changed anything. Teams can be technically well-run and still be building the wrong things.

Research basis

Google's Project Aristotle found that shared purpose and clear impact are two of five factors that predict team performance more reliably than individual talent. The OKR framework, as documented by Forsgren in Accelerate, operationalises this by making the link between work and outcomes explicit and visible.

GoogleAccelerate
03

Operational Maturity

How the team handles its own seams.

Does the system hold when the most experienced person is off sick? Operational maturity is about whether your handoff processes are documented, whether work has to meet a standard before it starts, and whether retrospectives actually change how the team works. This is where most delivery quality is gained or lost, at the transitions between phases, not inside them.

Research basis

Team Topologies identifies the seams between teams as the highest-risk points in any delivery system. Scrum.org's definitions of ready and done exist specifically to manage what happens at those transitions.

Team TopologiesScrum.org

What your score tells you.

Every result maps across all three areas, not just as a single number. You'll see where you're strong and where the gap is, with a specific recommended practice for each weak area.

Strong
70–100%

Your delivery system is mature and aligned. The foundations are in place, delivery is connected to outcomes, and the operational practices hold under pressure. The work now is refinement, not repair.

Developing
40–69%

The core works but specific seams are slowing the team down or absorbing impact before it reaches the business. There are one or two identifiable fixes that would make a material difference.

Early
0–39%

The fundamentals aren't consistently in place yet. Delivery is more person-dependent than system-dependent. The good news is that the highest-leverage changes are also the simplest ones, and they compound quickly once they're in place.

See where your delivery stands.

Each focus area takes about two minutes. The result tells you which areas to focus on first, and what to do about it.

Run the diagnostic
© Pressure Test