The Joel score is 22 years old now and fairly significantly outdated.
It predates unit-testing, ci/cd concepts, cloud computing, microservices etc etc. Scoring 12 was perfect in 2000 but its below baseline in 2022.
Although is a good starting point for things to look for, you might get a pass for things that shouldn't. I used to work at a place that every client project was spun out from a monolithic repo (that continued being developed) by... local copy, sure they were using git, but no libraries, modules, packages, etc. Getting a patch in was ridiculous. So YMMV.
I don't think the score itself is so much used directly as the metric as much as the info about work processes and style that comes out of the ensuing conversation. The integer is mostly irrelevant (unless it's hilariously low).
