Information System Projects and Group Conflicts

Conflict Types, Causes And Management

As a project manager, conflict is a normal part of a team’s development. Conflict often spawns creativity. Conflict shows that people care. But raw conflict can be destructive if it is uncontrolled. Handling conflict is sometimes part of a project manager’s job. You thought you had done everything possible to avoid it, and suddenly you are in the midst of a situation that feels out of control and irretrievable. It generally is not, but there are times when it feels hopeless and endlessly frustrating. One of the main reasons that conflicts occur is that the smaller issues have not been confronted earlier. It often feels easier at the time to let them slide, assuming that time will sort out things, or perhaps you are too busy to put in the effort to sort out ‘that minor issue.’ Sometimes though, life is just too messy, and the conflict occurs. We have to accept this fact. In this light, there are various conflict types I experienced as a project manager. The following is the list of the main ones, their causes, and the tactics used to resolve them.

Personality clash

This occurs when two people have strong and opposite psychological traits, and they are not sufficiently mature to recognize the strengths of the opposite type. System analysts and programmers may clash on the project specification and requirements that lead to its design. Education and training on team dynamics help, as will a focus on a shared objective. Separation is sometimes incorporated as the only solution.

Background conflict

In an Information System Project, it is common to find staff made up of people with many cultural, religious, and educational backgrounds; this is an area leading to conflict. Employing a group organization as one of the forms of group management makes the team organized in such a way that everyone feels valued with high levels of personal respect.

Organizational Role And Status

The organization hierarchy tends to vary with expertise. Groups within the organization may compete for the same resources, or one team may not communicate well with another department. This can result in a serious outcome of the task execution. As a manager, there is a need to look at the organization chart and think about how you share out work of your organization: is conflict designed? If so, consideration of restructuring the project so that teams are all focused on some ultimate deliverable is employed.

Gender Conflict

There is a common imparity when it comes to gender. Many managerial positions in Information Technology companies have the habit of not hiring women in technical positions. Women are great human assets. Delegating tasks like IT consultancy and technology trading to them within the affected groups enhances group cohesiveness. Thus a team thinks of a collection of individuals who are working together.

Team Leadership

This is due to perception from other members that their leader or the designated leader is not competent enough to claim the position. Resolving this is through the concept “a great team can make a weak leader look good.”As a project manager, surround yourself with people who know more than you. Give them full credit for their ideas, pay them well, and build loyalty.

Disagreement over a decision within the group

Different people have different takes on various matters arising during the project phases; this is due to some sort of communication barrier. Using a decision-making methodology to facilitate the group reviewing the decision is employed. Thus the outcome would be either agreed to the original decision or possibly a better decision.

Team Heterogeneity

This is a team characteristics conflict in which a more diverse team tends to have more conflict as a result of various duties. In this case, there is a need to review the composition of the group, which focuses on the right balance of skills, experience, and personalities in the team. Thus, conflict resolution.

Time Pressure

Time constraints are inherent in most IS projects leading to reactions from different people. Therefore conflict occurrence. For example, during the management of a School Decision Support System Project, it occurred that there was a need to follow an iterative development process to meet the customer requirements. This resulted in project scheduling problems as the project was not visible. To solve this conflict, analyzing projects that succeeded under the same scenario and their timing was adopted.

Some of the more recognizable sources of these conflicts are:

Different expectations – usually centered around timescales, costs, or the range of facilities.
Interruptions and the inability to keep to the original timescale.
Lack of understanding of each other’s position – this may be for technical, commercial, or personal reasons.
Issues that have been left unresolved or avoided come back at a critical point and can no longer be ignored.
Physical distances, proximity, and culture. These may play a role, particularly if you need to be working on the customer’s site.

In essence, these were the roles plaid by the project manager in resolving the above conflicts.

Risk identification and management: under people and organization risks, there are group conflicts. The project manager prepared a briefing document for senior management showing how the project was making a very important contribution to the goals of the business. More so, recognizing team so that there is more overlap of work and people, therefore, understand each other’s jobs.

Discovering the requirements of each team

This was done by interviews, questionnaires, and observation. More importantly, ethnography involves an external observer watching users and questioning them in an unscripted way about their work, thus reducing conflicts by understanding the social and organizational requirements of various teams.

Scheduling: ensuring all project activities are carried out with an understanding of the required task duration and task requisitions.

The project manager gave both parties an opportunity to present their cases without interruption, asking probing questions and inviting the other party to give full consideration. Thus, showing neutrality in what I, as the IT project manager, say and how I say it.

Splitting the project into an analysis team and a programming team was a recipe for mutual antagonism.

Staff motivation, by needs satisfaction; as under physiological safety, social, esteem and self-realization needs [Maslow’s Theory]. This ensured that people or rather staff are simulated to work effectively as possible.

How the conflict affected the performance of the team members

According to the conflicts experienced, it definitely did affect the performance of the team members. As I explained before, raw conflict can be destructive if it is uncontrolled. These conflicts: personality clash, background conflict, and team leadership mutated into personal animosity, with grudges being held and sides being taken. The group members tend to lose the working spirit, reducing their throughput because of inconsistent group cohesiveness and communication. The problems also delayed the time of project completion in response to scheduling conflicts increasing the cost. Therefore, there is a need to incorporate the strategies in resolving the conflicts.

References

David L Olson (2004) Introduction to Information Systems Project Management, 2^nd Edition: University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Article (2005 – 2007), Information Systems Project Selection Practice. Universitas 21 Global Pte Ltd.

Financial Analysis Session 2, Web.