Navigating conflicts between project stakeholders [and how good governance helps]

by Nicki Carruth | Oct 25, 2021 | Project Assurance

In our entire history as IQA New Zealand, we’ve never encountered a project where there haven’t been disagreements. In fact, a difference of viewpoint is what helps business drive the best possible outcomes. Stakeholders are each involved in a project for a specific reason from technology to customer experience – their KPIs are each linked to the business’ objectives. When a programme or project reaches across all of these units, there’s plenty of opportunities for debate around what’s important. In an ideal scenario, stakeholders have the space to air their concerns or motivations, with an outcome satisfactory to everyone involved. Sometimes the project will need to defer to the scope as a guide around impartial decision making. If that scope and requirements are challenged or interpreted differently creating a conflict, the governance framework in place becomes absolutely critical. In these situations, roles and responsibilities outlined by the framework offer points of escalation through which to make progress. But conflicts in projects are much more than a matter of who gets the final say. Unresolved conflicts can lead to stakeholders losing faith and engagement in the project. We’ve compiled a few things that all organisations running projects and programmes should consider when experiencing such conflicts.

Conflict is normal in every project

As unnatural as conflict is in Kiwi work culture, it’s simply part of life. We remind our clients that conflicts don’t have to immediately take on negative connotations; it’s a sign your people care about their work and the goals they’re trying to achieve. Conflicts resolved properly can also generate even better solutions than what had been scoped previously. Unproductive conflict is, unfortunately, part of life as well – personalities, egos (we all have them!) and agendas are at risk of creeping into decision making sometimes, particularly if a stakeholder feels cornered or exposed. These are harder to manage but they can be managed. Leadership from the executive level down to the project manager will have the responsibility for handling conflicts as they arise. But so do those involved with the conflict, be it a delivery team member or stakeholder that has some skin in the game (i.e. their personal KPIs).

Separating business objectives and personal ones

Are you currently in a disagreement with someone on a project? Ask yourself truthfully whether the debate is anchored to business outcomes.

Those involved in the conflict, whether in the middle or on either side of the disagreement, need to quickly establish the root cause of the issue; is this really borne out of a genuine divergence of opinion on what’s best for the business? Or is this simply what you want in order to have the final say. It’s very easy for even senior staff to become personally attached to being ‘right’, leaving a clear signature on that project.

This is not to demean the importance of personal career goals – but misidentifying good for business outcomes with personal ones can impede project success. If a project and its personnel allow decisions and delivery to be pulled in the direction of a stakeholder’s personal will, there is a significantly higher chance of failure than if these wishes were processed through a strong framework of governance.

Examples of business outcomes for a project include:

Delivering to budget
Meeting our identified customer/user needs per scope
Meeting the timelines
Improving the broader business’ efficiency, profitability etc
Enabling progress of a digital transformation

Examples of a personal outcome could be identified as:

“My KPIs are…”
“I can’t do my job if…”
“I am not prepared to…”
Blocking progress (e.g. approval) due to being too busy
Having a strong, unwavering opinion on a part of the project that is outside that stakeholder’s role (e.g. a tech lead attempting to force changes in business process)

Personal career challenges caused by a project are important and should be aired by that stakeholder. The business will have to make decisions around whether a project outcome or individual KPI is more important, and once this decision has been made, support either the project or that stakeholder to adjust the scope and expectations.

The importance of a clear scope

If a scope isn’t well-defined, conflicts could sink the project fast. Scope pertains to the deliverables and outcomes of a project. In the example of an IT-related project, the scope will define what the solution’s functions and benefits will be. But as important as what the project will include, is the things that it won’t be.

Imagine an organisation scopes out a project to build an intranet for customers where they can pay their bill or check personal details are correct. A phase one project might be to simply get the basic payment and details features in place. The scope may determine that setting up a payment plan on the platform or getting live support are out of scope because of the budget and time pressures to deliver the core functions, as determined by the senior leadership team.

Imagine then, the payment team in that organisation have KPIs to reduce the response time to client requests about setting up payment plans. This creates a motivation to push for a feature that allows this to happen on the intranet solution, thus freeing up time for the team to respond faster.

This sort of example isn’t uncommon. If a scope hasn’t been clearly defined around features that won’t be incorporated in the solution, there’s a bigger risk of stakeholders interpreting the features in scope as including that functionality as well. The scope isn’t just there to protect the delivery team’s time. In our above example, the leader of that payments team would have a good business case to realign the business unit’s KPIs for that period. Referring to scope shouldn’t be a matter of eliminating different viewpoints. No scope is 100% perfect, and in plenty of projects, new ideas are put into action in the form of scope change – creating a better business outcome. The scope ultimately is there to guide some of these conflicts, and if a workable solution can’t be talked out, helps keep progress.

Is lack of communication causing project problems?

So many of the conflicts between stakeholders or delivery teams and stakeholders grow because of a lack of effective comms. If even one party doesn’t actively listen to the concerns of the other, the conflict will drag on and get worse.

Emailing and slack chatting may be efficient for functional delivery work, but it’s the death knell for conflict resolution. Conflicts should be pulled ‘offline’ to be hashed out in person where possible. If you are on the receiving end of some pointy written comms, our advice would be to get on the phone or in a meeting room. If there is a perceived seniority imbalance, it’s a great idea to include leadership in these meetings that can help diffuse any of this.

Resist the urge to respond by written channels – especially if it’s the end of the day when everyone’s patience is shorter. End of day email disagreements can become 11 pm email flame wars. Who needs that?

Anyone who has worked in the corporate world for a long period of time will have come to learn; there are far more keyboard warriors than there are truly disagreeable people in a workplace. Bringing unpleasant conversations into the ‘real world’ brings the temperature down quickly, and can even plant the seeds of a really positive working relationship. If it doesn’t, it’s time to escalate things (more on this in a moment).

Let’s remember – we’ve all had less than stellar moments in our jobs, and many of us are guilty of sending an email that we regretted after simmering down. Often the core of what we’re saying isn’t necessarily wrong, but our delivery can be.

If in doubt, talk it out. Past 4 pm? Step away from the keyboard!

The project manager’s role and when to escalate

If you’re the project manager and finding a stakeholder is consistently slowing down your team’s progress, it’s important that you have a clear idea of the escalation process. Project managers, especially those who are on contract and lack mana or background in a large organisation, may come up against stiff resistance at times. A project manager’s job is to help deliver on time and on budget. Ideally, you’ll be empowered and supported to resolve those conflicts directly. However, continued barriers put up by a stakeholder that prevent delivering to due dates and budget will sometimes need to be escalated to the steering committee and in some cases senior leadership. You may bear some of the brunt of a difficult stakeholder – most project managers have. But it’s not your job to address performance or personality issues within the organisation. Have a plan of who to go to and how to do it as soon as you’re in the role.

Governance and the roles everyone plays

As we’ve suggested in the title of the article, conflicts and governance are closely linked. As independent project quality assurance professionals, we’ve observed many conflicts that threaten to derail a project that would be totally non-existent with the right governance in place.

So, how does governance help resolve conflicts?

Governance sets out the method in which the project will be run and managed. The structure, roles and responsibilities, reporting lines, and crucially, stakeholder engagement all come under this framework.

To simplify things, governance is sort of the ‘rulebook’ on which the project will be run. It sets out how the game will be played, and who will be playing it. That means specifically stating which stakeholders are involved, and to what degree.

While scope determines the parameters of the project solution, governance determines the parameters of the projects’ management. An additional benefit of governance is how it sets out communications and reporting to ensure everyone who should be informed, is. If a project operates with sound governance and reporting from the get-go, conflicts can either be mitigated earlier or drastically reduced in severity or frequency throughout the duration. To this extent, project governance shouldn’t be a heavy-handed, nor bureaucratic function of a project. It should proactively help everyone from the senior leadership team down to a front end developer do their job easier.

Need an independent, objective QA partner ?

Our team can help you, your team and the organisation resolve governance issues by applying our extensive experience and methodologies to your project or programme. Conflict is a normal part of any business initiative, so it’s best to have the framework through which these can be resolved productively. IQANZ’s team aren’t just QA experts, we’ve been the project manager, product owner, and stakeholder. We’ll approach your governance challenges with empathy and a solutions-focused mindset. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s chat!