PMI-ACP Practice Questions #20
During an estimation workshop, a developer and a tester disagreed on the complexity of a user story. They start interrupting each other and questioning each other’s reasoning excessively, causing the workshop progress to slow and the team to worry about not finishing the refinement within the given timebox. As an Agile Practitioner, what should be your conflict management approach?
A. Pause the discussion and facilitate a timeboxed debate between the developer and tester, guiding them to reach a consensus while keeping the team engaged.
B. Redirect the discussion to focus on the workshop’s objectives and use a parking lot for unresolved disagreements, ensuring that the refinement and estimation are completed within the session.
C. Allow the team to mediate the disagreement collectively, encouraging an open conversation to foster understanding and alignment.
D. Use facilitator techniques like dot voting or affinity grouping to help the team quickly converge on an estimate and avoid prolonged debates.
Analysis
This scenario presents a conflict between a developer and a tester during an estimation workshop, which is disrupting progress and causing concerns about meeting the refinement timebox.
The Agile Practitioner must intervene in a way that maintains team collaboration, ensures workshop goals are met, and prevents unnecessary delays. The solution should balance facilitation and conflict resolution while keeping the team focused.
Analysis of Options
A: Pause the discussion and facilitate a timeboxed debate between the developer and tester, guiding them to reach a consensus while keeping the team engaged.
- While this option allows the individuals to resolve their conflict, it slows down the overall workshop progress, which is already a concern in the scenario.
- A timeboxed debate could be useful in a less time-sensitive situation, but here, ensuring refinement completion is a higher priority.
- Not the best option, as it doesn’t effectively address the immediate challenge.
B: Redirect the discussion to focus on the workshop’s objectives and use a parking lot for unresolved disagreements, ensuring that the refinement and estimation are completed within the session.
- This is the best approach as it keeps the workshop on track while deferring the debate to a later time, ensuring that the refinement process is completed.
- A parking lot is a common Agile facilitation tool that helps teams set aside discussions that are important but not immediately necessary for completing the current goal.
- This option maintains focus, prevents unnecessary delays, and allows resolution in a structured manner later.
- Strong choice as it aligns with Agile facilitation techniques.
C: Allow the team to mediate the disagreement collectively, encouraging an open conversation to foster understanding and alignment.
- Encouraging open discussion is valuable, but in this scenario, the team is already worried about time constraints.
- Leaving the team to mediate could further prolong the workshop rather than resolving the conflict effectively.
- While a self-organizing approach is desirable, the need for timely refinement completion means intervention is necessary.
- Not the best approach given the urgency of the situation.
D: Use facilitator techniques like dot voting or affinity grouping to help the team quickly converge on an estimate and avoid prolonged debates.
- Dot voting and affinity grouping are useful techniques for prioritization, but they don’t directly resolve the ongoing conflict.
- The issue isn’t just about reaching an estimate—it’s about the disruptive debate that is slowing progress.
- Not an ideal choice because it doesn’t address the conflict directly.
Conclusion
The correct answer is Option B: Redirect the discussion to focus on the workshop’s objectives and use a parking lot for unresolved disagreements, ensuring that the refinement and estimation are completed within the session.
This approach ensures the team stays on track, prevents unnecessary delays, and allows the disagreement to be addressed later in a structured manner. It aligns with Agile facilitation techniques and conflict management strategies that focus on guiding the team while maintaining productivity.
PMI – ACP Exam Content Outline Mapping
| Domain | Task |
| Mindset | Promote Collaborative Team Environment |
| Leadership | Facilitate Conflict Management |
Topics Covered:
- Redirecting discussions to maintain focus on estimation workshop objectives.
- Using facilitation techniques like the parking lot to manage unresolved conflicts.
- Preventing excessive debate from delaying backlog refinement.
- Balancing structured conflict resolution with time constraints.
- Ensuring productive discussions while keeping the team engaged.
- Encouraging collaboration while avoiding unnecessary escalation of conflicts.
- Maintaining alignment with Agile principles of teamwork and facilitation.
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