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The paper will include the discussion of various conflict resolution techniques in the agile project team environment. The situation which will be discussed in the paper includes the issue of change in scope required to be implemented by the project team. The developers in the team are also facing the complains related to their poor coding. The developers claimed about the architect’s documentation errors in response. The paper is based on the study of three conflict resolution techniques critical for the agile coach to change the team dynamics in the scenario. Two common causes of team conflicts will be discussed along with the recommendations to prevent or mitigate these conflicts. Two pros and cons of conflict resolution techniques will be analyzed. Three situations will be determined where these conflict resolution techniques would be useful. Three strategies will be recommended where conflicts can be used as the strategy to achieve high team performance. five best practices will be recommended for creating cooperation and collaboration within agile teams.
The scenario facing by the agile coach is the issue in coding done by the team. But the team did not take the responsibility and claimed that the issue resides to the architect’s documentation errors. Hence, no one is taking responsibility for the issue and creating team conflicts. In such situation, the agile coach is responsible to adopt the conflict resolution approaches to change the team dynamics (Hass, 2007). The three possible conflict resolution techniques are as followed:
The first approach is to establish a neutral stance to mediate the conflict. Being the coach, it is important to be detached with a specific outcome and step forward to a neutral zone so that all the parties of interest will equally take part in the conversation to resolve the conflicts. The neutral stance of the coach will help to reduce biases and enhance the healthy conversations to reach a common point to resolve the conflicts.
Secondly, let the coach parties of conflicts express their positions and give chance to everybody to speak. When parties will own their positions and believe on their “I” Statements, the coach can bring the conflicting parties to move to the solution building process. This is called re-framing the conflict. When conflicting parties get assured that their views listened, they begin to come to a common problem and attempt to diminish their personal point of views and reposition the views over the dispute to become more conducive to bring its solution (Adkinds, 2009).
A third technique is to build a solution-focused conversation in which the team will come into the collaborative space in order to discuss the healthy solutions to resolve the issues. For example, developers and architects should discuss the common place where the issue was going on. It is significant to recognize that whether the error takes place in coding or documentation. For this purpose, the developers can check coding errors and architect can check the documentation to assess the error report.
The two causes of conflicts in the particular situation are miscommunication and lack of coordination. These are the two causes which should be overcome in the underlying case. The poor communication caused the confusion among the members of the team to realize their responsibilities to reconfirm the errors on their behalf. Secondly, the members become unable to collaborate their efforts with one another to discuss the team concerns for carryout error-free tasks.
The agile coach can take active steps to mitigate or prevent these conflicts. First of all, the coach should ensure that team members are going to use the proper communication channels throughout the project in order to communicate all the important concerns related to the job (Highsmith, 2009). The team leader has the responsibility to monitor the tasks at each stage of the project. For example, the coach should ensure the error-free coding during the developing stage so that an appropriate data should flow to the architects. It is authentic that developers should communicate all important information related to coding data and provide the cross-check report to the architects in order to confirm the appropriate accomplishment of work tasks at this stage.
Performance appraisal is the second approach which is recommended to the coach. Performance appraisal ensures effective monitoring and control over the operations. The documentation check is required to ensure the error-free proceeding at the last stage. Management effectiveness is required in order to monitor and control the process.
The two conflict resolution techniques recommended above are the neutral stance of the coach and to let the parties believe in their “I” statement and reframe the conflict.
The first approach of taking the neutral stance has various pros such as listen to the team perspectives in a broad sense, identification of the real cause of the issues, reduce biases and favoritism, provide equal opportunities to all to talk. The cons include delay in process, time taking activities, difficult to reach at a common point, conflicting communication and use of harsh wordings and conflicting tone of members.
The second technique is to reframe the conflicts after letting them go with their “I” statement. The pros include take a position on one to believe without fixing on it and create a mindset to take initiative for starting to think about the solutions. Cons include bearing the other positions equally and time taking negotiations.
Three different situations where these conflict resolution techniques would be useful are as followed:
The first situation is accommodating level where conflict resolution is highly required to bring peace and trust in staff first before started working to achieve positive outcomes. The second situation is collaborating level where the coach needs to make staff ready to collaborate to resolve conflicts in order to achieve desirable goals of the project. The third situation is compromising level where team members must compromise with one another to resolve conflicts and leave their personal agendas for achieving the common project goals.
An agile coach can use conflict to propel team members to achieve higher performance by following three strategies. First of all, a coach can create the situation of competing for the level of conflicts where team members would be allowed to give their arguments and present their agendas to contribute to new ideas of the project. Secondly, make employees allow to argue on their creative ideas. Such kind of conflicting situations brings positive results and high performance (Conforto & Amaral, 2010). Thirdly, team members should be allowed to keep some personal grudges so that they will keep some distance and not create union against the employer and get focused on their personal responsibilities instead of backbiting.
Following are five best practices for cooperation and collaboration within an agile team:
First of all, set clear objectives to be understood by each member of an agile team. For example, set zero error target for the developers, designers, and architects. Secondly, separate the work for sub-teams to avoid duplication and create cross-team dependencies plan. For example, developers will check coding errors and architects will check documentation errors. Thirdly, multidisciplinary members will coordinate. For example, go beyond departmental gridlines and merge the efforts of developers and architect to find errors (Moe, Dingsøyr & Dybå, 2010). Forth, developing self-organizing teams from design and architecture department. For example, go beyond particular individual scales and collaborate their efforts. Fifth, cross-team daily standups should be promoted. For example, the scrum of scrums uses to scale collaboration.
Agile project management technique is of great consideration to build high performing teamwork considerations. Being the agile coach, the conflict resolution is a critical responsibility in order to ensure high performance of the agile team.
Adkinds, L. (2009). Handling conflict on agile teams: What to do when a team member complains. Retrieved from https://www.agileconnection.com/article/handling-conflict-agile-teams-what-do-when-team-member-complains.
Conforto, E. C., & Amaral, D. C. (2010). Evaluating an agile method for planning and controlling innovative projects. Project Management Journal, 41(2), 73-80.
Highsmith, J. R. (2009). Agile project management: creating innovative products. Pearson Education.
Hass, K. B. (2007). The blending of traditional and agile project management. PM world today, 9(5), 1-8.
Moe, N. B., Dingsøyr, T., & Dybå, T. (2010). A teamwork model for understanding an agile team: A case study of a Scrum project. Information and Software Technology, 52(5), 480-491.
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