You're facing team conflicts over agile practices. How can you align everyone on the best approach?

Active listening to team members’ concerns fosters empathy, respect, and a sense of value beyond just resolving conflicts. It uncovers deeper human experiences, aligns shared visions, and creates feedback loops that ensure agile practices evolve with real-time input, fostering transformative views, relevance, collaboration, and growth. Eg., in a digital transformation project for an EMEA client, we encountered resistance and conflicts over priorities and expectations. Through brainstorming and individual discussions, we developed a hybrid approach that balanced innovation with proven methods and provided upskill opportunities for team members. This resolved conflicts, prevented delays, and enhanced both the product and client satisfaction.

One of the core values of agile manifesto is "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". Providing a platform for transparent, open, constructive communication sits at the root of agile mindset. Being open to truly listening to your team, collaborating with them to bring in their perspectives into your team's agile process is key. The heart of agile lies in collaboration, delivering, reflecting and improving. So, the team together needs to collaborate in order to deliver the product. And once you deliver, you reflect on the process and results to figure out how you can improve! It is all about the individuals and interactions in the team. Once people feel heard, they have a better "buy-in" into the tools and processes.

To me, first and foremost it is essential to understand the root causes of the disagreements. If I am to put it in steps I would say: Hold a meeting to let team members express their concerns and preferences regarding agile practices. Look for areas where team members agree, using these as a foundation for building consensus. Ensure everyone has a clear understanding of agile principles and how they apply to our specific project and the organization at large. Involve the team in choosing which agile practices to adopt or modify, fostering a sense of ownership. From there we’d evolve to continuous improvement and continuous development (CICD), encouraging open communication about what's working and what isn't. Build a winning culture.

Begin by engaging in individual conversations with team members to uncover the underlying causes of the conflict, ensuring you understand each person's perspective. Follow this by hosting a refresher session to reinforce agile principles and clarify the specific roles and responsibilities within the team. Create opportunities for open discussions and conduct regular retrospectives, allowing the team to address concerns collaboratively and find solutions together.

Agile methodologies are based on the pillars of communication, transparency and visibility. Therefore, it's recommended to promote dialogue in order to get buy in on adopting agile practices. To implement agile in your team, consider using agile. Make your team feel empowered to put forth their viewpoints and make decisions collaboratively. Consider meeting regularly but subtly scheduling daily stand-ups, and make note of the change/enhance in communication of everyone on the team.

Best practices with Agile need to be flexible. Focus on the people who get the work done by promoting dialog. Focus on solving the interpersonal issues first and the other issues the team will solve on their own.

Encourage open and constructive dialogue among team members. Provide a platform where individuals can express their viewpoints, concerns, and suggestions regarding agile practices. This helps in understanding different perspectives and finding common ground.

Fostering open dialogue in a safe environment is crucial for effective teamwork. Regular meetings or workshops focused on agile practices encourage team members to share their thoughts and ideas comfortably. This approach helps in understanding different perspectives and collaboratively deciding on the best agile implementation methods. It promotes teamwork, mutual respect, and continuous improvement

Set up regular recurring team meetings as a safe space giving everyone the chance to voice opinions and ideas in a respectful and non-judgmental manner.

Aligning objectives is really effective! Not only the task objective itself, but how can we benefit our team with conquering a new challenge! Leave aside the “I” approach and promote the “we” instead! People tend to consider the task as the main goal, but after so many years in the auto industry, I’m absolutely sure that the real win is the collaboration among all team members! The task is the means to achieve such a great team result!

Clarify Agile Principles and Goals. Reinforce understanding of agile principles (e.g., iterative development, collaboration, flexibility) and the goals they aim to achieve. Discuss how these principles align with the team’s objectives and the organization's overall strategy.

Ensure that everyone understands and is aligned with the overall objectives of using agile practices. Highlight how agile methodologies contribute to achieving project goals, improving productivity, and responding to changes effectively.

Agree on 'what' success looks like as a team and identify how agile practices and methodologies might come in handy in achieving the goal(s) that the team has defined.

One way to address team conflicts over agile practices is to aligning everyone on the best agile practices is to provide education and training on agile methodologies. Teams may have different levels of familiarity and experience with agile practices, and providing consistent training can help ensure that all team members have a shared understanding of how agile should be implemented. This can help reduce misunderstandings and conflicts over agile practices.

Understanding the root cause of the conflicts .. identifying common issues can lay groundwork and bridging separate perspectives. Educating and training through workshops or an agile coach can help immensely. Starting small and incremental changes.. starting with the least controversial ones can assist with buy in. Facilitating open communication and giving the team the ability and sense of being heard Getting feedback and adjusting on what’s best for the team And of course celebrating successes no matter how big or small

Provide basic and refresher courses on agile principles and practices and encourage your team to attend as it ensures everyone's common understanding when applying agile methods.

Address any misconceptions or gaps in understanding about agile practices through thorough education and training. Provide resources, workshops, or mentoring sessions to enhance team members' knowledge and skills in agile methodologies.

Transformation is a gradual process that faces lots of challenges within the team and through external factors. A team can be a blend of waterfall and agile or pseudo agile or with agile mindset but with different perceptions or WoW. So, to think and set mindset that '1 size fits all' and go wild goose approach can create chaos down the line. Lets make sure everyone speak their mind. Remind yourself and everyone about 5 values of agile which serves like pillars of agile.

Introduce agile practices gradually if the team is transitioning from traditional methods or if there are conflicting preferences on how agile should be implemented. Phased implementation allows for adjustments and minimizes resistance.

We sometimes underestimate time and the need for taking time to adjust. In the past I’ve led teams where we didn’t have a long time to properly digest the change and or processes, but I made it a point to personally go to team member and get their feedback and asked how I could make the change smoother for them. That small step helped with the team members resistance to the changes and allowed them to feel heard, and seen and made for a smoother implementation of the processes.

I believe Agile mindset at its intrinsic core is to foster adaptability. In today’s highly dynamic and evolving business environment- it becomes a must that “Team” focuses and aligns to achieve common goals. As we all are unique and bring our own perspectives - having a “working agreement” to keep the power train together will surely reduce the friction. It’s a simple customised RASI. And as the team matures - working agreement must continue to be refined and adapted according to changing needs of businesses and product development complexities.

Agile methodologies emphasize adaptability and responsiveness to change. Emphasize the benefits of adaptability in agile practices, such as continuous improvement, flexibility in responding to customer needs, and faster delivery of value.

Always consider business objectives even as you educate and navigate the inevitable group conflict. In other words conflict resolution must be structured to strengthen the possibilities for business success

Agile Transformation is a journey and to bring the entire ART onboard will take time, effort and resilience. When a team has always been working on waterfall the mindset shift is of epitome importance. Few pointers 1. Assess if it is worthwhile to implement Agile, considering few projects are better of in waterfall or hybrid 2. If yes, do we have nod from senior management on Agile Implementation as sometimes you need leadership blessing to drive change 3. Educate the team on Agile values, principles and new ways of working 4. Some resistances are due to lack of knowledge and information 5. Don't boil the ocean, do POCs and conduct lessons learned. It is easier that way 6. Reflect on the inertia and try to identify the cause to fix that

As a Program Management Consultant, I've often seen organizations lose focus on these critical points, stifling their agile transformation: Cultural Shift: Leaders must model agile behaviors, not just conduct training. Focus on embodying agile culture, not just practices. Empower Teams: Foster an environment where teams make decisions and take ownership. Leaders should let go of control, assess capabilities & assign responsibilities accurately Continuous Feedback: Implement regular feedback loops & retrospectives for both projects and individuals. Customer Focus: Maintain customer obsession; true agility centers on customer needs. Metrics that Matter: Use metrics reflecting progress toward goals, not just activity.

Adopt a Flexible Approach: Be willing to adapt practices to better fit the team’s needs. Agile is about flexibility and continuous improvement. Experiment with different practices and adopt what works best.

Show your team that they are supported and heard. Be a leader that listens and makes the changes needed to have a healthy team. Also remember that simplicity is sometimes the best route.