The Niki Niko calendar is a way to visually record team happiness across a period of time. This simple method makes it easy to identify when individual or overall mood was impacted. Use the results to analyse recent events and identify areas of improvement for the team.
How to use a Niki-Niko calendar
- Set up the board with your desired time period, add the team name at the top and everyone’s name down the left hand side.
- Each day, the team members add an emotion token that best represents how they feel.
- At the end of the time period, review the calendar together.
Tips for using the Niki-Niko calendar
- Without proper introduction and team buy-in, this can feel like a top-down “management” exercise. Take time to explain why you think the team would benefit from tracking this data together.
- Make sure the entire team opt-in to use the calendar.
- Do not share this information outside of the team.
- You can review a completed calendar in your sprint retrospective. Ask the team to annotate their entries with explanations.
- Use a Niko-Niko calendar over multiple periods of time to build up patterns of data.
