Conflict is a natural part of human collaboration. However, it can be either constructive or destructive. Let's check them.
Constructive Conflict
Where each party has its own idea, but they are open to new initiatives. In this case, they work together to create a new idea out of both parties' ideas, which is usually a better idea because they have created synergy.
For this type of conflict, Scrum Masters should do NOTHING. It is part of the growth of the team.
Destructive Conflict
Where the conversation between parties is no longer about the work, but about emotions and principles.
In this case, they hurt each other, kill trust, and empiricism no longer works.
In this case, Scrum Masters should intervene to de-escalate the conflict to heal the team.
If you see a destructive conflict, you can leverage AI to help you how to deal with the conflict by giving you some suggestions:
When you want to use AI, you need to effectively communicate your request with the AI system. A good communication guideline has the following steps:
1- Describe the conflict:
Tell the AI extensively what the conflict is and describe the context.
2- Teach the AI system:
You can tell the AI system how to see the conflict as unbiased. Ask it to use the following questions with their answers. It gives it a lot of input to generate better suggestions:
A- Have we created a Done Increment in the recent Sprints?
B- Have we met the Sprint Goal of the recent Sprints?
The result of this process is the following prompt:
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[Describe the conflict and your context in detail].
This conflict is escalating, signaling that I, as the Scrum Master, need to step in and support the team in resolving the conflict.
I know that I should be unbiased and show it authentically. So, I use the following two questions to set the stage for conflict resolution:
1- Have we created a Done Increment in the recent Sprints?
2- Have we met the Sprint Goal of the recent Sprints?
As we are experiencing the conflict, most likely the answer to these questions is no.
Now, create a step-by-step action plan of the way to resolve the conflict and foster collaboration within the team.
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Copy this prompt, paste it into an AI system like ChatGPT, and fill in the brackets with the specific data of your conflict to generate a step-by-step action plan.
This is a sample prompt for a sample conflict:
We are a Scrum Team working on a web-based application. Recently, a conflict has arisen between the back-end developers and Jack, our front-end developer. Jack advocates for using a specific framework that provides base templates for front-end elements such as textboxes, labels, and buttons. He suggests that the back-end developers should send element specifications—like dimensions, colors, and font sizes—to the front-end, where the framework would use them to render these elements on the web pages. On the other hand, the back-end developers argue that such settings should be managed within the presentation layer, not coming from the back-end.
This conflict is escalating, signaling that I, as the Scrum Master, need to step in and support the team in resolving the conflict.
I know that I should be unbiased and show it authentically. So, I use the following two questions to set the stage for conflict resolution:
1- Have we created a Done Increment in the recent Sprints?
2- Have we met the Sprint Goal of the recent Sprints?
As we are experiencing the conflict, most likely the answer to these questions is no.
Now, create a step-by-step action plan of the way to resolve the conflict and foster collaboration within the team.
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Copy this prompt, paste it into an AI system like ChatGPT, and enjoy the result.
If you are a Product Owner and want to learn how to effectively leverage AI for the new generation of product management, you can attend my upcoming Professional Scrum Product Owner – AI Essentials class. Click here to see the class information.