Conflicts

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.

- Dorothy Thomson

You seldom hear of a project that failed because of interpersonal conflicts in the project team. We’ve seen statistics on why projects fail, and sure, conflicts are to be found. But this usually involves conflicts of interest between the stakeholders, between the project and the rest of the organisation, resource management and so on.

So – is a project a zone void of interpersonal conflicts? Where everything is handled through a process of reasoning and problem-solving?

Not likely. Projects are more structured than non-project work, we have agreed on a plan and we know who decides what. When conflicts occur, we have a plan for handling them before they cause problems. But this does not mean that interpersonal conflicts are absent. They exist, as in basically all other human interaction. PMBOK 4, chapter 9.4.3n tells us that successful conflict management can lead to better increased creativity and better decision making. It also states that if a conflict escalates, the project manager should help facilitate a satisfactory resolution. The PMBOK is regrettably a bit thin in providing info on how this is done. This PDP will provide you with that knowledge.

In this PDP we will focus on conflicts and conflict resolution. The PDP starts with an e-learning module, that will take approximately 15 minutes, and gives us an overview on the topic. Next, we deepen our knowledge by examining the matter further in the knowledge pack – that could either be read on-line or downloaded as a hard copy.

After this, we are skilled enough to carry out the assignment. After passing your exam, you will be able to claim your PDU points, as well as use the knowledge to further boost your PM skills!

Goal

After completing this PDP you will know the basics of conflicts and conflict resolution, enabling you to analyse the situation and decide on a strategy when conflicts are involved.

Objectives

We will learn …

• What conflicts really are
• When to intervene
• The outcome of different conflict management tactics, and
• How to distinguish between different types of conflicts.