What It Is:
Attributed to Lyssa Adkins.
The Tree of High Performance is a visual metaphor used in Agile environments to illustrate the values, characteristics, and outcomes of high-performing teams. It helps teams understand the foundational values (roots), the characteristics that support high performance (branches and leaves), and the results of these efforts (fruits). This concept aids in team building and fostering a high-performance culture.
How to Use It:
What does a High Performing Team look like? How can we help our teams achieve levels of high performance? In her book Coaching Agile Teams, Lyssa Adkins gives us the metaphor of the High Performance Tree to walk through the conditions required for, characteristics of, and benefits from a team working at the highest levels.
When discussing the High Performance Tree with your teams or stakeholders, start by identifying the foundational values (roots) that your team strives to embody. Lyssa suggests the five Scrum values (Respect, Openness, Focus, Commitment, and Courage), but I recommend having the team identify their own values (such as trust, collaboration, or fun).
Next, outline the characteristics (leaves of the tree) that support high performance. Lyssa borrows from Jean Tabaka’s Collaboration Explained for the following eight characteristics of a collaborative team:
- Self-Organizing (versus role- or title-based)
- Empowered to make decisions (versus being dictated to from outside authority)
- Truly believe that, as a team, they can solve any problems
- Committed to success as a team (versus success at any cost)
- Trust motivates them (versus fear or anger)
- Participatory in Decision Making
- Decisions are consensus-driven (versus leader-driven)
Finally, define the outcomes (fruits) the team will likely achieve, such as faster business value, the right business value, and a team that, indeed, can do anything.
By describing high performance with the metaphor of a tree (or another metaphor, if you like), you help your teams to identify and align on these elements. Try prompting the group into discussion with questions such as:
- What do we value as a team? Where do we get our nourishment?
- What specific challenges are we facing as a team? What needs to change in our environment?
- Are there particular areas we want to focus on?
See Also:
See my video: https://youtu.be/NGPnFzU1fXI
References:
Lyssa Adkins is known for her contributions to the field of Agile coaching, and “Coaching Agile Teams” is a widely respected book in the Agile community.
Visit the Agile Coach’s Toolkit for more definitions, models, theorems and stuff.