What would be your approach to handle conflicts between two teams that are failing to deliver a feature?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Addressing conflicts between teams that are failing to perform requires a
strategic and diplomatic approach to identify underlying issues, foster
collaboration, and drive performance improvement. Here's how I would address
conflicts between underperforming teams as a Program Manager:
 1.  Identify Root Causes: Start by identifying the root causes of the conflicts
     and performance issues. This may involve conducting interviews,
     facilitating team meetings, and analyzing project data to understand the
     underlying challenges.
 2.  Facilitate Open Dialogue: Create a safe and constructive environment for
     teams to openly discuss their concerns, perspectives, and challenges.
     Encourage active listening and empathy to foster mutual understanding and
     trust among team members.
 3.  Mediate Conflict Resolution: Act as a neutral mediator to facilitate
     conflict resolution and consensus-building among teams. Help teams identify
     common goals and interests, explore alternative solutions, and find
     mutually acceptable compromises.
 4.  Clarify Roles and Responsibilities: Clarify roles, responsibilities, and
     expectations for each team to ensure alignment with project goals and
     objectives. Establish clear communication channels and escalation
     procedures to address issues promptly and effectively.
 5.  Set Performance Expectations: Define clear performance expectations and
     metrics for each team, aligned with project objectives and deliverables.
     Establish performance goals, milestones, and accountability mechanisms to
     track progress and ensure accountability.
 6.  Provide Support and Resources: Provide teams with the necessary support,
     resources, and training to improve performance and overcome challenges.
     This may include additional training, coaching, mentoring, or access to
     specialized expertise as needed.
 7.  Promote Collaboration: Encourage collaboration and teamwork among teams by
     fostering a culture of transparency, cooperation, and shared
     accountability. Facilitate cross-functional collaboration and knowledge
     sharing to leverage collective expertise and resources.
 8.  Monitor and Evaluate Progress: Continuously monitor team performance and
     progress toward goals, identifying areas of improvement and celebrating
     successes. Conduct regular performance reviews and feedback sessions to
     assess performance, address issues, and adjust strategies as needed.
 9.  Escalate if Necessary: If efforts to resolve conflicts and improve
     performance are unsuccessful, escalate the issue to higher levels of
     management or seek external mediation to facilitate resolution. Act
     decisively to address systemic issues and prevent further escalation.
 10. Celebrate Achievements: Recognize and celebrate achievements and milestones
     reached by teams, fostering a sense of accomplishment and motivation to
     sustain performance improvement efforts.

By adopting a proactive and collaborative approach to addressing conflicts and
underperformance among teams, I can foster a culture of accountability,
continuous improvement, and teamwork, ultimately driving project success.

Anonymous · Answer

As a TPM responsible for on time delivery my utmost priority is to unblock the
things which can impact the same.  In case of failing delivery, I would like to
understand more about the kind of conflict that is causing the same.
1. Is this technical conflict  - If the nature of conflict is technical, calling
the individual teams, involve architect and perform a thorough design review to
understand the blockers, dependency to be done. At the end of this prepare the
list of tasks to be completed and assign it to the right teams with ETA. Track
this periodically. 
If the feature or complex then arrange for ORIT till the clarity is arrived and
enables team to work independently. 
2. Is this timeline conflict  
The timeline conflict could be due to issue in planning. With different stake
holders, get the detailed planning including the dependency and merge the plans
and get the consensus from individual owners on the timeline and publish with
all the teams.
3. Is this human conflict - If the delivery is affecting due to human conflict,
in short term intervene and understand the perspective of both the parties.
suggest a middle ground and perform the role of middleman where the
communication can pass thru the PM. In long term this might not work in that
case in the best interest of the project changing either of the team members
might be one of the solutions.

Anonymous · Answer

Using a root-cause analysis framework such as Ishikawa (or fishbone diagram) and
talking to each team individually determine the source of the factors that led
to the disagreement and ultimately led to the failure of the two teams failing
to deliver the feature. With empathy and compassion, explain how the factors
from each team affected the other and how that led to a negative outcome for
both. Suggest and advise on compromises that each group can consider to meet the
shared objective and then identify the time and focus each team must adhere to
in order to get back on track. Further, identify check points for each team to
share their progress in non-attritubutable setting to ensure blameless and
effective progress.

Anonymous · Answer

I will work with the Product Owners to define the feature , scope , timelines
,and proper definition of done , ready and define the timelines and value that
is being delivered . Then work with the tech team to determine the solution
approach and breakdown the feature in to high level stories / work breakdown
into task determining the time & effort required to deliver it , sequencing the
work in progress and trying to prioritize the work to incremental release and
unlocking the cross dependency mapping the work for the alignment between both
the teams - preparing the high level plan of execution with the timelines for
dev + test + release in prod

Anonymous · Answer

I would first establish a common understanding of what is driving the conflict.
 Once the parties have agreed on the cause, I would try to act as a mediator to
resolve the issue. If unsuccessful, I would escalate

Anonymous · Answer

Create a safe environment for both parties to speak . 
try to get clear understand of the exact scope of the conflict & tunderstand the
dependencies between the team and agree on a desired approach to continue

Anonymous · Answer

Meet with the two teams, review what's the current state, review what's causing
the issue, brainstorm ways to resolve the issue, get commitment from the teams
to implement the fix

Anonymous · Answer

Understand the concerns, identify the roadblocks and risks that is blocking the
team from delivering. Schedule a meeting to
mutually discuss the issues , identify the blockers and risks and escalate for
priority / resource constraints

What would be your approach to handle conflicts between two teams that are failing to deliver a feature?

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