Assignment 3: Resolve Conflicts and Promote Collaboration as an Agile Coach
The following resources may be helpful when completing this assignment:
“Handling Conflict on Agile Teams: What to Do When a Team Member Complains” (You may also view the article at http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/articles/892-handling-conflict-on-agile-teams-what-to-do-when-a-team-member-complains.)
“Unsolvable Conflict on Agile Teams” (You may also view the article at http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/articles/888-unsolvable-conflict-on-agile-teams.)
Determining how to build a high-performing agile team, while managing conflicts, is a considerable task for any agile coach. In this assignment, you are asked to explore and discuss various conflict resolution methods and determine when and how to use them as an agile coach. You must discuss the techniques in the context of an agile project team environment with various scenarios, and must also demonstrate approaches to turning the high-contention situations into high-collaboration situations.
For example, the project team has consistently encountered changes of scope by the product owner. The QA team also emailed the whole team on how poorly the developers have done in their coding. The developers escalated to their manager about the documentation errors from the architects.
Identify and evaluate at least three (3) conflict resolution techniques that can be used by the agile coach to change the dynamics of the team in the example provided.
Speculate on two (2) common causes of conflicts in teams. Suggest two (2) approaches that agile coaches can take in order to mitigate or prevent these conflicts.
Analyze the major pros and cons of two (2) conflict resolution techniques. Determine at least three (3) different situations (e.g., levels of conflicts) where these conflict resolution techniques would be useful.
Suggest at least three (3) strategies where an agile coach can use conflict to propel team members to achieve higher performance.
Recommend at least five (5) best practices for collaboration and cooperation within agile teams. Support each best practice recommendation with one (1) example of collaboration within agile teams.
Use at least three (3) quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources. You may use the resources above or others of your choosing.
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.
Assignment 3: Resolve Conflicts and Promote Collaboration as an Agile Coach
Agile team operations are prone to conflicts among various parties within the team. Conflict within a working harms the output among the workers. In this respect, the management, as well as the relevant authorities, need to adopt the appropriate strategies, policies, techniques, and best practices to resolve disputes within the working environment. Equally important, agile teams have everyone and everything needed in their operation in achieving the goals and objectives of their organizations, but the presence of conflict among them ruins everything. In this regard, any agile coach needs to manage the current conflicts to enhance significant performance from their team. The agile coach needs to enhance the management of conflicts through conflict resolution techniques, conflict prevention and mitigating technics, the transformation of conflict as well as collaboration and cooperation by teams ensure proper working relationships and achievement of goals and objective.
To begin with, the agile team, in this case, is faced with various conflicts of consistent change of changes, poor coding by the developers and documentation errors from architects that need to be solved (Salami, 2010). In this respect, the agile coach needs to adopt conflict resolution strategies. To start with, the conflict of consistent change of scope can be resolved through accommodation. In this case, the agile coach needs to be flexible to ensure that they can accommodate changes that keep on arising. More so, the problem associated with the poor coding need to be addressed through collaboration between the agile team and developers to ensure that coding is done correctly. The agile team and the developer work hand in hand to ensure that issues arising in coding are perfectly addressed. Moreover, the conflict between the developers, manager, and architects resulting from errors in the documentation needs to be sent through the strategy of avoiding. The documentation errors can be addressed by bringing all the affected parties on board to correct the mistakes.
Consequently, there are various causes of conflicts in teams, and the agile coach needs to develop approaches to address such causes (De Dreu and Gelfand, 2008). In this case, poor and improper communication is a major cause of conflicts among teams. Miscommunication makes the team players to lack coordination in the course of operation. In this regard, the agile coach needs to identify definite and clear communication channels among the team players to ensure bright, and complete messages are passed. Additionally, misunderstanding is a major cause of conflicts among agile team players. The misunderstandings arise in defining expectations, work condition, responsibilities, differences, and nature of the jobs. The misunderstanding can be addressed through proper planning and precise definition of the work process.
Furthermore, the identified conflict resolution techniques have pros and cons, and the agile coach should capitalize on them to utilize them in various situations (Salami, 2010).In this respect, the strategy of accommodation has pros and cons. Accommodation strategy ensures that conflicting parties can work with each other’s while; on the other hand, the strategy denies perfection during delivery. Therefore, the accommodating strategy needs to be used in cases where the perfection of results is not mandatory. On the other hand, the strategy of collaboration between conflicting parties has pros and con. The accommodating strategy enables fast service delivery while at the same time, the strategy is expensive due to efforts used to ensure conflicting parties collaborate. The collaborating strategies can be used in cases when conflicting issues are minor issues.
Moreover, the agile coach can adopt the appropriate procedures in using the conflict to propel high performance among the agile members (Ogungbamila, 2006). In this regard, the strategy of compromising can be used to propel the agile teams in conflict to achieve high levels of success. In compromising the agile coach ensures that the issues raised by different parties are respected, thus enhancing collaboration and assertiveness in the course of operations. Furthermore, the competing strategy can be used by the agile coach to propel success. The agile coach ensures that the conflicting parties in the team compete in achieving a common goal set out by their organization. Also, the strategy of avoiding can be adopted by the agile coach to propel success. In this case, the conflicting parties can be allowed to avoid conflict or issues of contention, thus ensuring that they work towards a common goal despite the differences.
Lastly, there are the best practices that the agile teams need to incorporate in the course of collaboration and cooperation (Dobbins, 2010). In this respect, the agile team needs to ensure that t teamwork is incorporated as a culture in the organization. For instance, the organization instills the values of togetherness and conducive environment such that the workers know that it takes all of them to complete a task. Furthermore, the agile teams need to be provided with the necessary resources to ensure thy collaborate and cooperate at work. For instance, the team provides agile teams with conducive working spaces at different locations, thus enhancing interaction and thus, cooperation. More so, the agile teams need to focus on the team goals to ensure there are coordination and cooperation. For instance, the firm makes the goals to be the center stage by defining the role of every team player towards meeting the goal. Moreover, the organization needs to give rewards cooperatively as compared to competitively. For instances, the management needs to rewards the team’s effort while at the same time recognizing the individual efforts. Additionally, the organization needs to develop or invest in a collaboration portal to enhance cooperation. For example, the management invests in collaboration software for employees to share training videos, video-conferencing, and for employees from various departments to interact, thus enhancing cooperation.
In conclusion, agile teams are faced with conflicts that need to be addressed in time to ensure delivery. The conflicts need to be addressed by adopting the best practices and conflict resolution techniques to address and counter the negative impacts of conflicts. Equally important, eliminating conflict among the agile teams ensures that all the parties work towards a common goal, thus achieving the set objectives. Additionally, the conflict resolution strategies have pros and cons, and therefore, the agile coach needs to capitalize on the pros and minimize the cons. Lastly, eliminating conflicts through the best practices ensures that there are cooperation and collaboration in the course of working.
References
De Dreu, C. K., & Gelfand, M. J. (2008). Conflict in the workplace: Sources, functions, and dynamics across multiple levels of analysis.
Dobbins, T., (2010). The case for ‘beneficial constraints’: Why permissive voluntarism impedes workplace cooperation in Ireland. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 31(4), 497-519.
Ogungbamila, B., (2006). Relational conflict resolution strategies (RCRS) and workplace frustration. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 16(1), 59-64.
Salami, S. O., (2010). Conflict resolution strategies and organizational citizenship behavior: The moderating role of trait emotional intelligence. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 38(1), 75-86.
