Being an Effective Agile Coach-Leader

Being an Effective Agile Coach-Leader

Today, companies embrace agile ways of going about their work in their functional designs (Meyer, 2016). However, it is worth noting that the necessary transformation and change level is not as simple as replacing agile processes across groups. On the contrary, investing in agile leaders enables organizations to maintain and enhance an agile change. An agile coach is an agent of transformation and remains comfortable in dissatisfying conditions. Agile coaches help their teams embrace new progressing techniques with agile mindsets (Gren & Lindman, 2020). They bring cultures of increased performance and educate people across the company to ensure that everyone comprehends the new practices.

Conflict Resolution Techniques

The success of any agile project heavily depends on effective communication since a lack of communication results in most of the conflicts within any team. There are various dispute resolution techniques, such as problem/collaborative solving, directing/forcing, and accommodating/soothing. Whenever there is team chemistry, communication flows easily. Team chemistry, also known as team synergy, is the natural undirected willingness to forego personal accomplishments and acknowledge the overall team’s and project’s success (Bushuyeva, Bushuiev & Bushuieva, 2019). Every project manager’s goal ought to be achieving such synergy as mentioned above. However, if there is unresolved animosity within the team, it would be difficult to achieve the chemistry.

Problem-solving techniques will aid the project manager in identifying any underlying issues and progress toward a solution whereby both parties win. The win-win approach helps in removing any underlying animosity through collaboration. Besides, the strategy works to prolong the team’s life. The compromise and resolve technique will help the project manager find a middle ground. Despite the middle ground always being a lose-lose situation, both sides are happy with the compromise (Gren & Lindman, 2020). As long as the resolution is fair, the above technique will not tamper with the team’s chemistry. If one party feels that the other party lost as much, the group wins.

The forcing strategy requires the project manager to comprehend the dispute at hand extensively. Additionally, the manager is expected to remove any personal biases and decide based on what is best for the project. Once a common understanding has been achieved, the manager must take one side and direct the other party to submit. The above is a win-lose situation since only a single party is satisfied. Unfortunately, if the above technique is not handled with care, it may develop hatred, which may eventually cause a downfall for the team.

Common Causes of Conflict in Teams

The most common causes of conflicts are misunderstanding instructions and a lack of a feedback strategy. Misunderstanding the project’s requirements may cause disagreements about strategy and execution. Furthermore, the above may conflict with the “definition of done.” To help mitigate the problem, the stakeholders should keep their engagement high throughout the project and include the whole team in the user-story workshops (Meyer, 2016). Having the stakeholders involved prior, during and after the projects ensures all demands are being met.     Also, the team maintains its focus without taking the wrong path. Conversely, there would be no need for any individual to represent the stakeholders in case of a misunderstanding since the stakeholder is present to clarify any issues the team may have. Along with ensuring the stakeholders’ engagement throughout the project, inviting the whole team to user-story workshops will help familiarize them with the stakeholders’ personalities and help them listen and comprehend the instructions first-hand.

Another cause of conflict is the lack of frequent and authentic feedback. As mentioned earlier, communication is critical in an agile team. On the other hand, feedback is an essential tool to help enhance communication. Rather than bottling up disputes and allowing them to breed into a full-blown issue, transparent and genuine feedback should be embraced to improve productivity by opening communication paths. Organizations should adopt a culture of giving honest feedback to help tackle the above problem. The organization can develop the culture by ensuring all team members are present and participating in the project review and retrospect (McPherson, 2016). The only solution to avoid a future mistake is to understand what went wrong in the first place. It is significant to offer comprehensive feedback to ensure team members are not defensive during their feedback-receiving time.

Major Pros and Cons of Conflict Resolution Techniques

Although the approaches named above have been acknowledged in helping mitigate issues, they are not all one-size-fits-all. The project manager must understand when or not the situation requires the techniques. The following scenarios are ideal for executing the approaches mentioned above. The first is when the team is fresh, and most members have not worked together before. The concept is to start by building a culture of feedback. In addition, it creates a team with the belief that all team members will actively participate in the user-story workshops.

The second is when there are low levels of conflict. During the review of the project, the team should address all disagreements and the correct approaches introduced (Bushuyeva, Bushuiev & Bushuieva, 2019). The project manager or agile leader should ensure that the team understands that a new approach to engaging the stakeholders will be executed to mitigate the particular conflict due to low conflict levels. The last situation is when the conflict has affected the project’s progress. If a conflict stalls the project’s progress, the project manager must remove the particular conflict to see to the success of the project. The project manager should execute the above indiscretion during a project or review.

The advantage of the two approaches is that a leader can execute them at any time. The cons of the approaches include the team members taking long to adapt to the changes in cases where they have not been exposed previously. Feedback can be a hard pill to swallow and may alleviate conflicts for some personalities regardless of its truth. Without a doubt, the approaches may be a cause of pain until all members are satisfied.

Using Conflicts to Propel Team Members into Higher Performance

Conflicts do not have to be disadvantageous all the time. Disputes allow agile coaches and project managers to propel team members to achieve better performance (McPherson, 2016). In some instances, the leaders allow conflict without attempting to resolve the issue. A self-sufficient team with little to no project manager involvement tends to perform better. Conflicts will enable the team members to figure out their responsibilities and help establish communication lines to assist gain an improved comprehension of the requirements for completing the project.

In addition, the project manager can leverage a team member’s reaction to a conflict as a coaching technique as a chance for the team member to grow. Conversely, disputes and disagreements will naturally help the team members act as the devil’s advocates and raise concerns about the requirements to bring to light any mistakes.

Recommendations

Agile teams’ best practices for collaboration and cooperation include daily team communication, collaborative intention areas, dot voting or multi-voting, self-managing groups, and sprint reviews. A collaboration intention zone is the development of green and red zones to indicate the state of the team’s collaboration. When giving feedback, team members are asked to describe their teammates using only five words (Meyer, 2016). For instance, if the words are argumentative or defensive, the team member should be considered in the red zone and would need to exit that zone. On the other hand, if the words are open, the particular team member is considered in the green area. Members of a team must be aware of how their team members perceive them to highlight their weaknesses and start improving on the weaknesses.

Team members can achieve daily team communication through a daily scrum. One excellent way of opening communication paths is by having a time-boxed event to analyze the previous day’s happenings and what needs to be accomplished in the present day. Sprint reviews are significant to recap on what occurred during the last iteration. The ability to reflect on the work completed will assist in identifying holes and progress towards the ideal iteration.

Moreover, dot voting will aid in collaboration since every team member will have a chance to speak on the features they presume are important and give their reasons for their beliefs. The above compels every team member to engage and collaborate in the project. Lastly, a self-managed team is imperative since they can make efficient and quick choices. An instance of how to work for a self-managing group is to push for all team members to contribute to the decision-making process. It must be compulsory for everyone to reinforce or oppose a decision with reasons. The requirement mentioned above will be involuntary with time, and the teams can become self-managed and more productive.

References

Bushuyeva, N., Bushuiev, D., & Bushuieva, V. (2019). Agile leadership of managing innovation projects. Innovative Technologies and Scientific Solutions for Industries, (4 (10)), 77-84.

Gren, L., & Lindman, M. (2020, June). What an agile leader does: The group dynamics perspective. In International Conference on Agile Software Development (pp. 178-194). Springer, Cham.

McPherson, B. (2016). Agile, adaptive leaders. Human Resource Management International Digest.

Meyer, P. (2016). Agility shift: Creating agile and effective leaders, teams, and organizations. Routledge.

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Determining how to build a high-performing Agile team while managing conflicts is a considerable task for any Agile coach/leader. 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/leader. 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 in scope from 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.
Instructions

Write a 5–6 page paper in which you:

Identify and evaluate at least three conflict resolution techniques that can be used by the agile coach/leader to change the dynamics of the team in the example provided.
Speculate on two common causes of conflicts in teams. Suggest two approaches that agile coaches/leaders can take in order to mitigate or prevent these conflicts.
Analyze the major pros and cons of two conflict resolution techniques. Determine at least three different situations (e.g., levels of conflicts) where these conflict resolution techniques would be useful.
Suggest at least three strategies an Agile coach/leader can employ to use conflict to propel team members to achieve higher performance.
Recommend at least five best practices for collaboration and cooperation within agile teams. Support each best practice recommendation with one example of collaboration within agile teams.
Use at least three 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.

This course requires the use of Strayer Writing Standards. For assistance and information, please refer to the Strayer Writing Standards link in the left-hand menu of your course. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

The specific course outcome associated with this assignment is:

Promote team and stakeholder participation and collaboration throughout the project lifecycle.