Team Lead interview question · Most asked
How do you measure your team's performance?
Summary
With team-level flow and outcome measures — throughput, cycle time percentiles, work in progress, work item age, plus quality and the outcomes our work is meant to move — never individual activity metrics.
Longer Answer
Story points or tickets per person get gamed and discourage reviewing and pairing. Flow metrics describe the system the lead can change, and percentiles (50th and 85th) set realistic expectations. Combine them with quality signals (incidents, escaped defects) and outcomes (conversion, latency, support load). Review them with the team and use outliers as retro topics.
Key Points
- Team flow metrics, not individual activity
- Percentiles and outliers
- Combine with quality and outcomes
Deep dive: Flow Metrics: Cycle Time and Throughput
Explanation
What interviewers look for
Measurement maturity and protection of team behaviour.
Red flags
- Ranking engineers by tickets or commits
- Using velocity as a target
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