The necessity of conflict

Being a Product Owner is a conflict based role. Don’t let anyone try and tell you otherwise. If you want a comfortable, relaxing life, then you might want to consider other career paths.

However, I consider conflict to be necessary to achieve the best result for the product. Now, I believe there to be two kinds of conflict. The first is the shouting, arguing sort that leads nowhere. We do not want this to happen.

There is, however, a more productive kind of conflict. This comes from a position of respect where people feel comfortable to challenge each other and to debate the best way forward. Considering different perspectives when breaking down a story, for example, will lead to a much better result.

How do we achieve this though? What is the difference between a team that can productively debate a solution and one that descends quickly into an argument, or even one with no discussion at all? I think it can be summed up in one word; trust.

If you want to build a team that can comfortably debate, even heatedly sometimes, a topic then the members of that team must trust each other. Your people must be sure that they can argue their point and, if necessary, concede it is wrong without fear of ridicule or reprisal.

As a team, you should be able to have a passionate exchange of views, discuss those differing viewpoints, come to a consensus and then all go to the pub for lunch together. When the environment is right people can have conflict, resolve the dispute then move on with no hard feelings.

The other thing worth considering as product owners are our own conflict management skills. Remember that we are often going to be faced with stakeholders with different priorities and yet must have a well-ordered backlog.

I am not going to go into details about the many conflict management techniques that exist, there are plenty of training resources for that. I am merely going to point out that there is a requirement for every product owner to be able to handle disputes and sort them out effectively.

We all know that creating excellent software takes collaboration. However, it also takes conflict.