Answers to Divya: How do you manage conflicting interests of stake holders?
There is always conflicting interests, the strategy to apply is to figure out commonalities or why we are here.
There is a trap you shouldn’t fall into and that’s the attention to details. As a human being we love to advocate for our ideas, and in the daily rush sometimes we are starting to focus on a detail and you are losing the big picture. Manipulation starts when you scrutinize.
The counter-manipulation is to focus at the whole.
So, one angle in managing conflicting interests is to look at the whole and start asking non-directive questions (clean language for ex.) and asking why do you think your perspective is more valuable. Ideally, you are asking this question in public and you are asking that question to all attendees to avoid destructive finger pointing. Maybe you discover that the goal has changed and then you are reframing the new purpose. But usually it is like in a scrum team when testers are thinking testing, integrators integrations, developers development instead of completing a functionality.
A couple of years ago, one of team’s I had to support in a large transformation was considered as the black sheep. When I started to work with that team, I discovered that they had to handle with twelve different stakeholders with twelve different interests. 90% of PO’s work was to catch up with the parties to make them happy with a consequence that nobody really was.
Having the full trust of the board, I asked the PO to experiment with me something called Business Stock Exchange. That meeting is nothing new, it is a Product Backlog grooming with all the stakeholders. That meeting hold space Wednesday’s from 10:00 to 11:00. We designed a wall with columns having values from 1000 to 100 and have one user story per column so none of the stories had the same value like 999, 890, 750, 300, etc. The purpose of the meeting is to add or remove stories and reprioritise on business value.
To ensure that all stakeholders had a voice, they came in front of that wall to add new cards, remove and prioritize them. Something very interesting happened, the stakeholders started to deal with each other. At the end of the hour, we closed the session and explained that our focus will be on the first ten items and the next session will be same the week to come.
People loved it. The next day, the Chief Marketing Officer came to meet the PO and asked him to work rapidly on a new topic. The PO answered that he has to come next Wednesday for that Business Value Meeting, so he would take the demand, put it in the product backlog but for the sprint to come.
Happens exactly what you can expect, he escalate the story to the board of directors pointing the finger to that arrogant agile coach (me). Good luck for me, the board of directors acknowledged my decision.
The next week, we had a queue in front of the meeting room and everyone was present or had some representative.
Conclusion: usually personal conflict are falling down towards the common interest. You can’t make every one lucky when you are starting, just be welcoming even late in the process. You have to accept individual agendas and balance it with the common agenda. That common agenda is build together in full transparency.
