I recently saw a LinkedIn post from someone who was requesting advice on managing conflict in Agile teams. One response was to remove the people who are causing the conflict from the team.
- That may not be an appropriate solution – some level of conflict is necessary and healthy in a high performance team
- A team where everyone always agrees with everyone else would probably not be a very high performance team
- In this particular situation, the conflict was occurring over estimation. In that area, you certainly want to bring out opposing views and attempt to resolve them. You don’t want to suppress conflicting opinions
How Do You Manage Conflict in Agile Teams?
The right way to manage conflict on an Agile team is not to try to stifle conflict. An important value is to listen to the views of others and treat them with respect and consideration even if you disagree with them.
- Each person on the team also needs to put their own ego and emotions aside. Instead of focusing on who’s right and wrong; focus on working collaboratively with others towards what is in the best interest of the team and the business
- Some times people become argumentative and pursue an argument just to have the last word. They may also try to prove that they’re right and others are wrong. That behavior can be very counter-productive
- A good way to minimize that kind of behavior is to have a clearly-defined set of values that everyone on the team agrees to
Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development
“Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development” is an excellent model for understanding team performance. The model consists of four stages that teams go through in the journey to becoming a high performance team. Here’s a brief summary.
1. Forming
The first stage is called “Forming”. In this stage, “Individual behavior is driven by a desire to be accepted by the others and avoid controversy or conflict:
- Serious issues and feelings are avoided and people focus on being busy with routines such as team organization, who does what, when to meet, etc.
- However, individuals are also gathering information and impressions about each other an
- d about the scope of the task and how to approach it
- This is a comfortable stage to be in, but the avoidance of conflict and threat means that not much actually gets done.”
2. Storming
The next stage is called “Storming”. During this stage, “Individuals in the group can only remain nice to each other for so long, as important issues start to be addressed.
- “Some people’s patience will break early, and minor confrontations will arise that are quickly dealt with or glossed over
- These may relate to tIndent1he work of the group itself, or to roles and responsibilities within the group
- Some will observe that it’s good to be getting into the real issues, while others will wish to remain in the comfort and security of stage 1
- Depending on the culture of the organization and individuals, the conflict will be more or less suppressed, but it’ll be there, under the surface
- To deal with the conflict, individuals may feel they are winning or losing battles, and will look for structural clarity and rules to prevent the conflict persisting.”
3. Norming
As Stage 2 evolves, the “rules of engagement” for the group become established, and the scope of the group’s tasks or responsibilities are clear and agreed.
- “Having had their arguments, they now understand each other better, and can appreciate each other’s skills and experience. Individuals listen to each other, appreciate and support each other, and are prepared to change pre-conceived views: they feel they’re part of a cohesive, effective group.
- However, individuals have had to work hard to attain this stage, and may resist any pressure to change – especially from the outside – for fear that the group will break up, or revert to a storm.”
4. Performing
The final stage is called “Performing”. “Not all groups reach this stage, characterized by a state of interdependence and flexibility.
- “Everyone knows each other well enough to be able to work together, and trusts each other enough to allow independent activity. Roles and responsibilities change according to need in an almost seamless way.
- Group identity, loyalty and morale are all high, and everyone is equally task-orientated and people-orientated. This high degree of comfort means that all the energy of the group can be directed towards the task(s) in hand.”
Important Points to Recognize
There are several important things to recognize about this model:
Jumping Past Stages
You can’t just jump past the “Storming” stage and go right to the “Performing” stage
- The only way that might happen is the people on the team have a lot of maturity on working in other teams
- You have to progress through these stages to some extent to make progress
- For that reason, conflict should be viewed as a sign of progress that you’ve moved past the “forming” stage
Sequential Progression
You don’t necessarily always proceed through these stages in a strict sequential order.
- Sometimes a team will regress and fall back to an earlier stage and start over from that point and
- You might go back-and-forth like that over a period of time.
Moving to the Norming Stage
The natural progression for a team that is in conflict is to move to the “norming” stage:
- You do that by adopting rules and values of how the team interacts with each other.
- Those rules and values are like “training wheels on a bike”.
- After teams have reached a point of maturity, those rules become just a natural part of people’s behavior and the team reaches the “performing” stage which is similar to riding a bike without the “training wheels”.
Source: “Stages of Group Development”
Overall Summary
One of the key points in this model is that conflict is a normal and necessary stage of progression on the journey to becoming a high-performance team. For that reason, you shouldn’t try to stifle conflict – the best approach is to manage it by setting values so that it doesn’t become destructive.
Related Articles
Check out the following related articles on “Agile Leadership”:
- What Is Servant Leadership and How Does It Relate to Agile?
- How Do You Develop and Improve Emotional Intelligence?
- What’s Different About Agile Leadership?
- Fear of Failure Can Cripple a Project
- Managing Team Conflict in Agile Teams – Is Conflict Normal?
- Was Steve Jobs an Agile Leader?
- Emotional Intelligence in Agile – Why Is Emotional Intelligence Important?
- Using an Adaptive Leadership Style in Agile
Check out the following related articles on “Agile Teams”:
- What Is Distributed Project Management? Why Does it Make Sense?
- Improving Agile Team Performance – How Do You Improve Team Performance in an Agile Environment?
- How Do You Develop and Improve Emotional Intelligence?
- Managing Team Conflict in Agile Teams – Is Conflict Normal?
- Emotional Intelligence in Agile – Why Is Emotional Intelligence Important?
- What Are Self-Organizing Teams?
- Agile Cross-Functional Teams – Lessons Learned from Sports
Additional Resources
Resources for Agile Project Management Online Training.