The agile coach has the responsibility to build the team into a self-organizing unit that can make its own decisions and resolve its own conflicts as well as collaborate as a team to deliver the product. Building a team is much more than building a working group. ‘Going Agile – Project Management Practices’ says the agile coach has to

1. form the team and develop it through different stages,
2. build collaboration amongst the team members,
3. set the framework for group decision-making, and
4. facilitate conflict resolution.

He or she has to take a newly formed group of individuals from individuals working together, which would be a working group, to a team. Teams go through stages of development and they tend to reach their best performance after having been established for a while. Bruce W. Tuckman identified four phases of development concerning interpersonal relationships and task performance:

To ensure the team members are clear about the project goals, the agile coach should use a collaborative event such as the chartering session, and create an environment that allows the team to collaborate in the creation of the product. Collaboration is two or more people or organizations working together to realize shared goals.

Collaboration event – Planning session

The diagram is for a project planning and estimation session. It was developed together with project team members and the client. It was used in the forming stage of the project. It supported alignment of team members towards the project goals and with one another, and across understanding of project tasks that needed to be completed. In the opinion of the project manager, it reduced the duration of the storming phase.

At the top of the diagram are hand drawn boxes that would represent phases in the project. Going from an initial deliverable in the first column and to building successive components until the final product on the right side. Wide-band estimation according to Fibonacci numbers suggested by Planning Poker ® were used.

The components of the diagram are:

• The sticky note (yellow and pink) represents the tasks that have to be completed.
• The color represents if the tasks could be completed by the project team (yellow) or if it was sourced from a third-party.
• The tabs represent the estimates for the task.
• In the lower left is the legend for what colors represent what levels of effort.
• Each post-it® received an estimate if possible.
• If it was not possible to estimate the effort, the task was placed in the box in the lower right corner.

According to the visualization recommendations, the design of this visualization fits the recommendations.

1. Make it action-oriented: Created during the session; retained as reference during the project
2. Make it messy: the order developed during the session and its ugliness was retained
3. Make it specific to the situation – It was for a specific project.
4. Use different dimensions – it uses different

• Position: represents the evolution of the product over time
• Colours: pink, yellow, green
• Shapes: oblong post-its are tasks; tabs are estimates
• Numbers: are used as estimates

5. Make it interesting – the team was motivated and engaged.