My reflection - Visualisation 

 Challenge & Selection   I work as an Agile Coach within multi - cultural and distributed teams for mainly IT   companies .    I spend a lot of time on trying to build performing teams and one tool I use to help me   achieving this is visualisation .   This tool helps me to connect with team members I work with about concepts , piece of   information , and to build understanding between each other in order to achieve great   purpose as a team .     I especially use visualization in a team ’s activity I called : “ how to build our high performing   team ” .    I built this team activity inspired by Lyssa Adkins ’ video “ The High Performance Tree ”   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3kKechcwYM&feature=emb_title . 

 Application   The setup takes place in a room with flip charts or a board and the team members .    Generally , the team members are no more than 7 to avoid taking too much time . The   team is composed mainly of developers , software testers and a product owner .      I start the activity by drawing a big and , hopefully , beautiful tree on a board . I draw the   tree with its roots , branches and I ask the question about what they think the analogy is   between a tree and our team .   I let some time for the team members to think about their answers and to speak it out   loud .    It is a way of engaging them and sparking their interest toward the activity .   Afterward , I explain them the analogy between a solid and healthy tree and a high   performing team .     Then I start to write down at the roots of the tree the team ’s values .    If the team does not have defined team ’s values yet , I can write down the values of the   company or the values of the Scrum agile framework ( as described in the video above ) .    I described the roots as a need to be solid and healthy in order for the tree to grow solid   and resist potential storms . Like a team , when the roots of a tree are solid , they can resist   anything , and the tree can thrive . 

 Then I prompt the team to take some time and to reflect on their own roots ’ and to   identify if there is something we should change in our processes , relationships to   strengthen our roots .   Each team member has a set of post - it in front of them and they can quietly take time to   note their feedback .    After a time of reflection , notes are added near by the roots , we discuss them and agree   on potential team ’s actions to strengthen our roots .     Then , I go to the tree branches , and like in the video , I wrote down the characteristic of a   high performing team while describing these characteristics to the team and I ask the   team the following questions :   How far do you recognise these characteristics in our team ?   If we miss some of these characteristics , what should we do to get all of those   characteristics as a description of our team ?   I let a time of reflection again for notes to be added to the branches and I steer up a   discussion leading on potential team ’s actions .     At that point depending the team , the team might get enough actions points already in   which case , I finally draw the fruits , like in the video , and I wrote down what each of those   fruits mean . Then I would ask if the team want to continue the activity or if they have   enough action points to implement and we can take back the visualisation of our growing   tree at a later stage .     If team members want the former , I prompt the team with two last questions :    How far do you think we are from having those fruits ?   What should we do to be able to harvest those fruits ?   Again , the team has a time of reflection for writing down on notes and to discuss about   them leading to team ’s actions . 

 Insights & Approach   What I learned with this activity is that using metaphors during a visualization activity is   powerful . Metaphors instantly tickle the imagination of the audience and make things   more concrete when I want to explain a concept , especially such a concept as the one of   high - performing team .      Trying to build a high - performing team can be a vague and futile concept for team   members , mainly developers who generally want to get down at the code level and can be   in a defensive position when talked about changing things inside the team . It is even truer   if the team members did not identify problems yet .      Walking with them through the visualisation make them reflect and introspect on the   team ’s status . Most of the time we discover things we did not know . 

 Since I discovered the most valuable aspect of visualisation is to make things concrete for   people , I use this tool not only with team members but also with stakeholders and   leadership to explore other paths and to discover something we did not know or to   confirm some assumptions we had . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: My reflection - Visualisation 

 Challenge & Selection   I work as an Agile Coach within multi - cultural and distributed teams for mainly IT   companies .    I spend a lot of time on trying to build performing teams and one tool I use to help me   achieving this is visualisation .   This tool helps me to connect with team members I work with about concepts , piece of   information , and to build understanding between each other in order to achieve great   purpose as a team .     I especially use visualization in a team ’s activity I called : “ how to build our high performing   team ” .    I built this team activity inspired by Lyssa Adkins ’ video “ The High Performance Tree ”   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3kKechcwYM&feature=emb_title . 

 Application   The setup takes place in a room with flip charts or a board and the team members .    Generally , the team members are no more than 7 to avoid taking too much time . The   team is composed mainly of developers , software testers and a product owner .      I start the activity by drawing a big and , hopefully , beautiful tree on a board . I draw the   tree with its roots , branches and I ask the question about what they think the analogy is   between a tree and our team .   I let some time for the team members to think about their answers and to speak it out   loud .    It is a way of engaging them and sparking their interest toward the activity .   Afterward , I explain them the analogy between a solid and healthy tree and a high   performing team .     Then I start to write down at the roots of the tree the team ’s values .    If the team does not have defined team ’s values yet , I can write down the values of the   company or the values of the Scrum agile framework ( as described in the video above ) .    I described the roots as a need to be solid and healthy in order for the tree to grow solid   and resist potential storms . Like a team , when the roots of a tree are solid , they can resist   anything , and the tree can thrive . 

 Then I prompt the team to take some time and to reflect on their own roots ’ and to   identify if there is something we should change in our processes , relationships to   strengthen our roots .   Each team member has a set of post - it in front of them and they can quietly take time to   note their feedback .    After a time of reflection , notes are added near by the roots , we discuss them and agree   on potential team ’s actions to strengthen our roots .     Then , I go to the tree branches , and like in the video , I wrote down the characteristic of a   high performing team while describing these characteristics to the team and I ask the   team the following questions :   How far do you recognise these characteristics in our team ?   If we miss some of these characteristics , what should we do to get all of those   characteristics as a description of our team ?   I let a time of reflection again for notes to be added to the branches and I steer up a   discussion leading on potential team ’s actions .     At that point depending the team , the team might get enough actions points already in   which case , I finally draw the fruits , like in the video , and I wrote down what each of those   fruits mean . Then I would ask if the team want to continue the activity or if they have   enough action points to implement and we can take back the visualisation of our growing   tree at a later stage .     If team members want the former , I prompt the team with two last questions :    How far do you think we are from having those fruits ?   What should we do to be able to harvest those fruits ?   Again , the team has a time of reflection for writing down on notes and to discuss about   them leading to team ’s actions . 

 Insights & Approach   What I learned with this activity is that using metaphors during a visualization activity is   powerful . Metaphors instantly tickle the imagination of the audience and make things   more concrete when I want to explain a concept , especially such a concept as the one of   high - performing team .      Trying to build a high - performing team can be a vague and futile concept for team   members , mainly developers who generally want to get down at the code level and can be   in a defensive position when talked about changing things inside the team . It is even truer   if the team members did not identify problems yet .      Walking with them through the visualisation make them reflect and introspect on the   team ’s status . Most of the time we discover things we did not know . 

 Since I discovered the most valuable aspect of visualisation is to make things concrete for   people , I use this tool not only with team members but also with stakeholders and   leadership to explore other paths and to discover something we did not know or to   confirm some assumptions we had .
### Output: 