Project Management Conflict Resolution

Manage Conflict

• Work stressors, disagreements about project direction, and personalities can lead to conflicts.
• Effective conflict management improves understanding, performance, and productivity. Conversely, ineffective management leads to destructive behavior, animosity, reduced productivity, and project failures.
• Project leaders have significant influence in resolving conflict.

Investigate the Conflict

• In predictive environments, the project manager can facilitate conflict resolution sessions.
• In agile settings, empowered teams resolve conflicts as part of self-organization.
• Active listening, analysis of facts, and maintaining neutrality are crucial for investigation.

Tools & Techniques

• Leadership: Interpersonal skills, active listening, empathy, cultural awareness, expert judgment, and emotional intelligence are necessary.
• Conflict Management: Manages negative conflict while maximizing positive outcomes; often outlines in a team charter, ground rules, or way of working.
• Change Management: A systematic approach for handling conflict; using an issue log or impediment log is helpful.

Deliverables & Artifacts

• Team Charter: Describes team values, how to manage conflict, and communication.
• Conflict Management Matrix: A tracking tool for conflict escalation, de-escalation, or resolution.
• Issue Log: Used when conflict becomes an issue; records and manages issues.

Decipher Conflict Source and Stage

• Help the team identify the root causes of conflict, while keeping the project outcomes in mind.
• Conflict resolution strategies vary depending on the complexity of the issue.
• Potential causes for conflict include: competition, differing objectives, values, and perceptions, disagreements on work activities, and communication breakdowns.

Communication

• One-on-one discussions or informal interviews are helpful in understanding conflict.
• Essential leadership traits include emotional intelligence, adaptability, active listening, and negotiation.

Determine the Root Cause

• Active listening is crucial in conflict resolution.
• Establish facts about how the conflict arose.
• Remain impartial when coaching team members or stakeholders.
• Identify the root cause of the problem, as you would for any project issue.

Tools & Techniques (Task Three)

• Five Whys: A root cause analysis tool.
• Project Schedule: Links the conflict's emergence to project schedule elements.
• Fishbone Diagram: (Also called Ishikawa diagram) Helps identify potential causes of a conflict, problem, or effect.
• Data from interviews, discussions, and artifacts: Gather data on the conflict and sources.
• Critical thinking and expert judgment: Necessary for narrowing down the root cause.

Analyze the Context

• Once the root cause is determined, a comprehensive understanding of the context is needed by determining if any team dynamics or processes contribute to the issue.
• Analyze differing views and complications.
• Enhance team cohesion and stability.

Interpersonal Skills

• Project leaders need emotional intelligence, adaptability in leadership style, active listening, and negotiation.

Lessons Learned

• Document the analysis of the conflict, including information about stakeholders, and input from EEFs.
• This should be added to the project's knowledge base or lessons learned register.

Implement and Track Solutions

• The chart shows conflict resolution approaches (Withdraw/Avoid, Smooth/Accommodate, Compromise/Reconcile, Force/Direct, Collaborate/Problem Solve).
• Approach selection depends on the conflict's stage, complexity, the work environment, and the involved people.
• Some assurance and monitoring are required to ensure the solution works.

Face-to-Face Discussions

• In conflict situations, direct communication in person is ideal for clarity and direct response.

Updated Issue Log

• If conflict results in an issue, document and manage it.

Reprioritized Backlog

• The order of work (priority) may change due to conflict resolutions.
• A reprioritization process should happen to adjust for new project priorities.

Updated Impediment Log

• Record a conflict as an impediment to work, and track its resolution.

Lead a Team

• Task Overview: Team members need motivation. Project managers must adjust their leadership style to meet project and stakeholder needs.
• Lead the team by educating them about the project's value, fostering collaboration, and managing project tools and techniques.

Set the Project Vision

• Promoting the project's vision inspires team focus.
• Clearly defining short- and long-term goals maintains project alignment with stakeholders.

Support Diversity and Inclusion

• Project leadership should uphold the highest global standards regarding diverse identifiers, like gender, ethnicity, and disabilities.
• Fair decisions, tolerance of diverse expression, and examination of personal biases are crucial in a diverse environment.
• The team charter can incorporate guidelines for diversity and inclusion.

Value Servant Leadership

• Servant leadership is about serving the team, in agile settings, but applies elsewhere.
• This involves fostering growth, removing obstacles, and sharing authority—guiding rather than directing them.

Interpersonal Skills (Lead a Team)

• Good communication involves attentive listening and accountability.

Inspire, Motivate, and Influence

• Project teams perform effectively when they are motivated and unified—with strong trust and psychological safety.

Understand Stakeholder Influence

• Effective leadership requires understanding of stakeholder spheres of influence.
• Investigate potential impacts of actions on stakeholders and the project.

Influence Matrices and Power Grids

• Stakeholder classification by power, influence, and impact on the project is useful for communication.
• Two-dimensional grids enable grouping of stakeholders.

Stakeholder Engagement Plan

• This plan documents strategies to maintain productive stakeholder engagement.

Lead with Adaptability

• Project managers should adjust their leadership style to suit different situations, individuals, and organizational contexts.

Verify Performance Improvements

• Quantifiable metrics provide confirmation of improvements in team performance following training, feedback, and coaching.

Support Team Growth

• High-performing teams need a culture of continuous improvement, self-motivation, and the ability to resolve dependencies.
• A team's self-directed approach to decision-making builds confidence and purpose.
• Clear action plans should handle serious violations.

Support Task Accountability

• In predictive projects, the project manager assigns tasks, whereas in agile teams, team members self-organize.
• Both rely on elements of individual and team accountability to ensure optimal performance.

Project Schedule

• The plan should take into account the project's specific needs and timeline.
• The plan should show expected milestones.
• The schedule should align with the established project strategy and goals.

Deliver Value Incrementally

• Delivering value incrementally demonstrates the product's usefulness and value early in the development process—this is a chief benefit of incremental development.
• Agile teams frequently release deliverables to earn feedback and adjust their work accordingly.

Expedite Projects

• Timelines are essential for project delivery but should not supersede the need for achieving quality, value, and efficiency throughout the project lifecycle.

Manage Project Issues

• Managing issues often emerges from unexpected, emerging risks. Teams need a process for identifying, prioritizing, and resolving issues.

Recognize When Risks Become Issues

• Differentiating risks and issues is important for accurate planning: a risk is something that might impact a project; an issue is a risk that has already occurred and is impacting the project.

Collaborative Approaches

• Problem-solving efforts should occur collaboratively between everyone on the team to leverage collective expertise, as many issues are solved more effectively through collective problem-solving.
• Involve stakeholders in decision-making processes, as they may have different perspectives, ideas, and experiences that can enrich collaboration.

Approach Issue with Optimal Action

• Use a combination of data, knowledge, and expert judgment to respond effectively when an issue arises.

Engage Stakeholders

• Understanding and accommodating stakeholder needs and priorities are very important components of effective project execution, and should be addressed continually throughout the project lifecycle.
• It's important to understand stakeholders—their needs, motivations, and how they interact with your team—to establish clear communications and build trust.

Plan and Manage Quality

• Quality encompasses consistency with standards, fulfilling customer expectations, and adhering to policies.
• Effective quality management involves both planning for quality and continual evaluation of quality throughout the project lifecycle.
• It's useful to consider the cost of quality and the costs associated with quality failures.
• Assess, track, and document any quality issues.

Plan and Manage Scope

• A well-defined scope outlines exactly what deliverables the project is expected to provide.
• Establish clear, accurate scope statements and criteria from the start.

Manage Project Changes

• Change management is important in projects and organizations, and the process for handling changes should be planned and documented—this will help avoid unnecessary disruption and keep the project on schedule.

Define and Manage Schedule

• Scheduling depends on the project methodology and includes considerations for dependencies, resources, and the project workflow.
• The schedule should be adaptable based on the project development process and how the project work is conducted.
• Measuring progress and updating the schedule should be part of the ongoing process, and frequent communication is essential.

Plan and Manage Budget and Resources

• Budgeting should align with project scope and stakeholder needs.
• Continuous budgeting and monitoring are essential to control costs and manage resources effectively.