When I ask engineering leaders about their team’s health, they often point to metrics like velocity or bug counts. But there’s a simpler gauge: watch what happens on Monday morning. The energy level when people start their week tells you more about your team’s culture than any dashboard.
This isn’t about monitoring who shows up early or counting coffee runs. The Monday Morning Test measures whether your team is genuinely engaged or just going through the motions. You know your team culture is working when you see engineers volunteering for challenges, jumping into technical discussions, and turning routine code reviews into meaningful architectural debates.
Think of it as a weekly health check for your team’s culture. It’s about noticing patterns: Do engineers step up to solve problems on their own? Are senior devs making time to mentor others? Do junior devs feel safe asking questions? These behaviors tell you more about your team’s health than any sprint velocity metric.
This isn’t about monitoring who’s bright-eyed at 9 AM or who needs three coffees to start. Everyone has different rhythms - some hit their stride early, others take time to warm up. It’s about the broader patterns that emerge across the day: are people genuinely interested in their work once they’ve settled in?
What Strong Engineering Teams Look Like
A healthy team shows their engagement through natural behaviors. Engineers step up to tackle challenging problems not because they’re assigned, but because they’re excited to solve them. Technical discussions flow organically, with both junior and senior members contributing ideas. Code reviews go beyond syntax checks to meaningful architectural discussions.
Take incident response as an example. In a healthy team, you’ll notice a stark difference in how problems get handled. Instead of waiting for assignments, engineers proactively jump in when alerts trigger. The discussion moves quickly from “who owns this?” to “here’s what I’m seeing.”
During debugging sessions, knowledge flows freely. Someone spots a memory leak, another engineer shares a similar case from last month, a junior dev asks about the monitoring setup. No one’s keeping score or sticking to rigid roles. The focus stays on solving the problem, not on who’s supposed to do what.
The same energy shows up in feature development. In daily stand-ups, you might hear:
“I noticed our API response times spiked for users in Asia. Been looking into our CDN configuration, anyone want to pair on this?”
Or during code reviews:
“This works, but I wonder if we’re over-optimizing. Could we start simpler and evolve if we hit performance issues? Happy to whiteboard some alternatives.”
This natural flow of ideas and willingness to engage creates a feedback loop. When senior engineers show they value input from everyone, junior devs feel safer speaking up. When junior devs ask thoughtful questions, it pushes senior engineers to explain their reasoning more clearly. Both sides grow from the interaction.
The key isn’t that everyone speaks up about everything - it’s that people feel free to contribute when they have something valuable to add. The energy comes from genuine interest, not obligation.
The Warning Signs in Plain Sight
It’s easier to spot the signs of a disengaged team. Stand-ups become mechanical status updates rather than collaborative discussions. “No blockers” becomes the default response, not because everything’s running smoothly, but because people have stopped bringing up issues.
The changes are subtle but revealing. Engineers stay in their lanes, reluctant to step beyond their assigned tasks. Code reviews become checkboxes to tick rather than opportunities to improve the code. Technical discussions only happen when there’s a meeting link, with silence in between.
The decline often shows in Slack channels too. Technical discussions that once sparked multiple threads go unanswered. Questions that used to attract several perspectives now get bare minimum responses. The vibrant #tech-discussion channel that once needed moderation becomes a graveyard of links and automated alerts.
In code reviews, you’ll see patterns like:
PR: Major authentication system overhaulComments: "LGTM"Time spent reviewing: 3 minutesThis isn’t about quantity of comments - it’s about depth of engagement. A healthy review might have fewer comments but show real thought:
PR: API endpoint updateComments: "The logic works, but this might cause issues duringdeployment. We should consider using feature flags here.Happy to explain more if needed."Even bug reports tell a story. They shift from detailed context and reproduction steps to bare one-liners. The collaborative debugging sessions that used to attract multiple engineers become solo firefighting missions.
These changes rarely happen overnight. They creep in gradually as team members stop seeing their work as a shared mission and start treating it as just assigned tasks to complete.
How to Rebuild Team Energy
When you spot these warning signs, small changes can make a big difference. Start with code reviews. Instead of letting quick approvals slide, take time to ask thoughtful questions: “What other approaches did you consider? How might this scale?”
Make technical discussions safer. When someone raises a concern in stand-up, don’t rush to solutions. Ask follow-up questions. Show that raising issues leads to support, not judgment. A simple “Tell me more about what you’re seeing” can change the whole dynamic.
Break the silos naturally. Rather than assigning collaboration, create opportunities for it. When you spot an interesting technical challenge, mention it in Slack: “Been thinking about our caching strategy. Anyone curious about exploring alternatives?”
The key is making it safe to engage again. No mandated fun, no forced pairing sessions. Just consistent signals that technical discussions are welcome, questions are valued, and looking beyond your immediate tasks is encouraged.
Notice and acknowledge when people do step up. Not with grand announcements, but with genuine interest in their ideas. “That’s an interesting approach to the API design - walk us through your thinking”
The Monday Morning Test isn’t really about Mondays. It’s about recognizing when a team has shifted from just completing tasks to building something meaningful together. The signs are subtle - an impromptu architecture discussion, a junior dev questioning a design pattern, a senior engineer taking time to explain a complex refactor.
You can measure velocity, count bugs, and track sprint burndown. But at the end of each week, ask yourself: Are your engineers still curious? Do they care about the code they’re shipping? Does the team tackle problems together or just handle tickets?
The answers will tell you if you’re building a team that lasts or just managing a group of developers who happen to work on the same codebase.
