Chapter 5
The Human Side of Agile Project Management
THE FOLLOWING PMI-ACP® EXAM TOPICS ARE COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER:
Domain III: Stakeholder Engagement
Understand Stakeholder Needs:
- Task 1: Identify and engage effective and empowered business stakeholder(s) through periodic reviews in order to ensure that the team is knowledgeable about stakeholders’ interests, needs, and expectations.
- Task 2: Identify and engage all stakeholders (current and future) by promoting knowledge sharing early and throughout the project to ensure the unimpeded flow of information and value throughout the lifespan of the project.
Ensure Stakeholder Involvement:
- Task 3: Establish stakeholder relationships by forming a working agreement among key stakeholders in order to promote participation and effective collaboration.
- Task 4: Maintain proper stakeholder involvement by continually assessing changes in the project and organization in order to ensure that new stakeholders are appropriately engaged.
- Task 5: Establish collaborative behaviors among the members of the organization by fostering group decision making and conflict resolution in order to improve decision quality and reduce the time required to make decisions.
Manage Stakeholder Expectations:
- Task 6: Establish a shared vision of the various project increments (products, deliverables, releases, iterations) by developing a high-level vision and supporting objectives in order to align stakeholders’ expectations and build trust.
- Task 7: Establish and maintain a shared understanding of success criteria, deliverables, and acceptable trade-offs by facilitating awareness among stakeholders in order to align expectations and build trust.
- Task 8: Provide transparency regarding work status by communicating team progress, work quality, impediments, and risks in order to help the primary stakeholders make informed decisions.
- Task 9: Provide forecasts at a level of detail that balances the need for certainty and the benefits of adaptability in order to allow stakeholders to plan effectively.
In this chapter, you will finish the tasks found in Domain III: Stakeholder Engagement in the exam content outline. The tasks in this domain directly relate to the initiation or beginning of an Agile project as well as to the interaction with stakeholders utilizing interpersonal skills. It is important to understand how to obtain stakeholder buy-in, resolve conflict, and practice adaptive leadership before actual team execution of iterations, as seen in Domain II: Value-Driven Delivery and Domain IV: Team Performance. Understanding the different best practices for the human side of Agile project management while working with stakeholders on their vision of the increment is the best way to gain buy-in. This chapter will cover the rest of the tasks in Domain III and give you a well-rounded idea of how to apply interpersonal skills to knowledge sharing, adaptive leadership, and communication, which will carry over to all of the domains.
Interpersonal Skills
Interpersonal skills, while hard to quantify, make up a large part of an Agile project manager’s role on a project. A major part of what you will be doing is leading, communicating, motivating, and perpetuating the vision.
Many interpersonal skills come naturally to some personalities, while others may have to work a bit harder to sharpen their skill sets. Some personalities may find that they need to step outside of their comfort zones to immerse themselves in an Agile culture, while others will jump right in without any culture shock at all. Those who have a tougher time adapting to a new way of doing things could be external customers and stakeholders who may be more used to a more rigid set of processes for project management. This is especially true if the organization or the customer is used to or has worked in a Waterfall environment for the majority of their careers.
It would be difficult to say exactly what you should or could do in any given situation because neither the Project Management Institute nor I know your team on a personal level or your organizational culture like you do. Therefore, much of what you will read in this chapter will appear as generic information. I would ask that you think about your stakeholders and your team and how you interact with them. You can use this chapter as an opportunity to reflect and adapt your daily interactions with your team and stakeholders. This could result in giving yourselves a pat on the back for doing a fantastic job with your team as well as identifying areas that need improvement.
As you go through the main categories of interpersonal skills, ask yourself if any of the areas represent aspirational skills that you would like to work on. If there are skills that you already possess, then ask yourself if there is any improvement you need in those areas.
Communication
How people perceive you is how they will receive you.
Ashley Hunt
Obviously, communication is a big deal on any team, but in Agile it has a greater focus due to the importance of face-to-face communication, colocation of the teams, and visual information radiators like Kanban boards and other charts. If the communication in your organization is largely too many emails and too many meetings about meetings to discuss meetings, then a shift is necessary to work appropriately with an Agile team and properly engage your stakeholders. If you are an Agile novice (or your organization is new to Agile), then a bit of a culture shock will occur when things change over to a more interactive, communicative environment.
The key thing to remember about Agile teams is that the Agile Project manager is the coach. Your job is going to be to make sure that good, collaborative communication is occurring during facilitated workshops and even provide individual and group coaching as needed.
The stakeholders and your team are the who, and the product owner provides the what. The Agile project manager is the balance point on which it all hinges.
The goal in any Agile environment is to determine how best to communicate on many levels and truly understand where the stakeholders are in their thought processes while determining the definition of done. Otherwise, the team could unfortunately experience a very real situation called the gulf of misunderstanding.
The gulf of misunderstanding is when the customer is thinking and explaining something one way and the team understands it in a different way. All of a sudden, everyone believes that they are on the same page, until the review comes where the customer is wondering what the team has built and you are wondering why the customer isn’t accepting it.
The gulf of misunderstanding can be a very real thing on Agile projects. Therefore, effective communication is very important, especially if your customer isn’t very technologically savvy, or if they don’t understand the jargon you are using to describe something. They may give up and say, “Do whatever you think is best,” and then end up getting something that is very far from what they thought they were getting, or the conversation comes to a standstill until communication improves.
Figure 5.1 is a good visual of the confusion of not understanding which direction to go in, even though there are signs that are supposed to guide you.
FIGURE 5.1 The gulf of misunderstanding
If you break down the exam content outline for stakeholder engagement, much of it describes behaviors and communication needs throughout the project. In Chapter 4, “Agile Initiation and Stakeholder Engagement,” you spent time on the best practices for determining the definition of done and the aspects of pre-project engagement. Throughout the chapters of this study guide, there will be reference points to effective communication between the team and the product owner, the team and the Agile project manager, and everyone and the customer, as well as team communication on a team level.
The exam content outline points to some very specific needs from a stakeholder point of view, and it is important to delve a bit deeper into those to truly understand what the outline is describing and why it is so important—not just to pass an exam, but to truly get into the mindset of Agile. To be Agile.
To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.
Tony Robbins
Task 2 in the exam content outline for stakeholder engagement clearly points to identifying and engaging all stakeholders (current and future) by promoting knowledge sharing early and throughout the project to ensure the unimpeded flow of information and value throughout the life span of the project. I think that it is also realistic to find out their preferred method of communication, provided that it doesn’t eat up too much time that could otherwise be used to produce what it is they are requesting. I’m speaking of too many meetings or too many phone calls, just because that is what the stakeholders are used to.
It is going to be up to the Agile Project Manager to coach stakeholders, current and future, in the ways of Agile and protect the team from too many interruptions. However, with that caveat in place, it is still a good idea to ask someone their preferred method of communication. It’s unrealistic to assume that every single team member is colocated and every single stakeholder is wandering around the building ready for a conversation at any given moment. With that thought in mind, asking your customers and stakeholders what is most effective for them in the realm of communication isn’t outside the boundaries of any Agile method or framework. This is especially true if the stakeholders already understand that they are key contributors in timeboxed events like reviews and sprint planning.
How do you like to communicate or what is your preferred method? This would be above and beyond other communication types necessary on the project and a quite useful question to ask. Think about it; has anyone ever asked you how you prefer to communicate? If left to our own devices, some may say “face-to-face,” others may say “just send me an email,” while still others may say “formal events or ceremonies work best to focus the message.” It’s up to you how you engage your own stakeholders based on your own styles of communication and your organization’s culture. Remember, there would be no way that I could say this is best or that, unless I came to your organization. We can then, and only then, rely on best practices of effective communication.
I could literally fill a book with communication best practices, but I’ll conclude the communication piece with this: The better you know someone, the better you will be able to communicate. Communication is two way and action based, but perception is 100 percent reality. How people perceive you is how they will receive you. It’s your job to determine what that looks like and adapt your communication strategies accordingly.
Self-Directed Teams
What exactly is a self-directed team, and why is it so important for an effective Agile environment? Think about this scenario: Your boss hands you a list of things for you to do for a customer and then says, “I don’t care what order you do them in or how you split up your time.” Your boss then asks you how long will it take you to do all this?” How would you react? You would give them a realistic estimate on duration, and get as much done as you could in an order that seemed realistic. You probably wouldn’t drag your feet, but you would work diligently in a realistic time frame. You would likely get most of it done, and you would have a good reason for what you didn’t get done. That is a self-directed team.
Give the team the valuable items, let the team decide how much they can accomplish in an iteration and in what order they will do it, and then step away and let them fly. Provide coaching as needed and when requested, but otherwise be hands-off.
This is a very different dynamic from a project team that has directives and daily activities that are structured in a set order because the Gantt chart says so and the baselines demand it. This is a new way of thinking and working on a team level, and some who are newer to Agile frameworks may be a bit befuddled by it all in the beginning because they have been conditioned to work a certain way. This is, again, the job of the Agile project manager—to coach in the ways of self-directed teams, providing guidance and reassurance. Let them know that it is okay to do things this way and to block out any disturbances from pesky stakeholders who haven’t yet been schooled in Agile. Remember, Agile is easy to talk and think about, but it is very difficult to do. You are the Yoda of Agile project management, and it is up to you to teach others the ways of Agile.
Always pass on what you learn.
Yoda
Negotiation
When you think of the word negotiation, what do you think about? Do you automatically think about winning something, or do you see it more as a healthy give-and-take, a win-win situation, or a collaboration? How you view negotiation can significantly influence your ability for the good or not so good in an Agile environment.
Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?
Adam Grant, author of Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success
Adam M. Grant
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013 - Altruism - 305 page
Negotiation in an Agile environment is akin to both sides winning. You can probably tell with the amount of collaboration, communication, and teamwork that sharklike negotiation behaviors don’t have a comfortable spot on an Agile team.
Think about what you would need to negotiate on an Agile project. If you are a product owner, much of what you negotiate is based on what is valuable today and on what the customer wants. Sometimes, you would have to tell them no; otherwise, there would never be a defined “done” point. Keeping it simple and creating something minimally marketable every iteration isn’t about cramming as many features as you can into something during a one-month iteration. It’s give-and-take.
If you are part of the development team, you may be negotiating with your team members on work assignments and with the product owner on what can and can’t be accomplished. Regardless of the type of negotiations you do, it won’t be about you winning and the other party losing. It’s about compromise, collaboration, and win-win environments.
There are several philosophies of effective negotiation. Some suggest that you should understand your own negotiation style first. Do you play your cards close to the vest, or do you throw them all down on the table to create and maintain a good relationship? Other philosophies recommend that you mirror the style of the other party by doing research and knowing your audience. Other methods still suggest that you always show your cards first to set the bar and then work around that through give-and-take. This particular method never worked with my teenage daughter, but it’s been successful in my professional career. Come to think of it, not a single negotiation method or strategy prepared me for a teenage daughter! She’s considering law school—go figure?
Honestly, my feeling is that if it is unnatural to you to act one way over another during a negotiation, then that method probably won’t stick, much less allow you to work toward a good solution.
No matter what method you subscribe to, it is always good to be prepared in some way for the negotiation. If you are asking for a raise, then know what you want. If you are negotiating a feature that you feel is a “must-have,” then do the research to back it up.
A very basic, generic plan would be to establish your requirements and determine the value of the item being negotiated. Is it something you can live without, or are you negotiating for something that you must have to be successful? The answer to this question can determine how much preparation you need to do and how much of the outcome affects you.
I always find it is best to have two options: what you really want and what you can live with. I always start with what I really want first, because you can always come down to a different level but you can never go up.
Even though negotiation can sometimes have a negative connotation, it can involve a very healthy give-and-take to reach a conclusion on which everyone agrees. The first step to a good negotiation is to be aware that the other party has ideas that may differ from yours. If both sides are allowed to express those ideas and collaborate on them, something new can be achieved that both parties may never have considered. To truly be Agile, negotiation can only be done one way, and that is that both parties walk away feeling as though they were heard and can agree on the direction in which they are headed. In that respect, it is a win-win endeavor.
Aspirational Skills
There are many other core aspects of interpersonal skills that are hard to quantify as well, or even put into the context of your personal day-to-day thoughts and feelings. Many of these skills are learned behaviors, and many of you came into the world doing them intuitively as part of your personality or nature.
The Project Management Institute’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct places items into two categories: aspirational skills and mandatory skills. Aspirational skills are things we aspire to be better at, such as always working on being better communicators, negotiators, and servant leaders.
Mandatory skills are things like don’t break the law, don’t discriminate, don’t have any conflicts of interest. Things that would be illegal or unprofessional in any industry fall under this category. The Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct is designed to highlight the importance of always aspiring to learn new skills and master them while at the same time being a good, ethical person. You will have to accept the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct before you take your exam, and you will be held to it. I highly recommend that you read it prior to accepting it.
The aspirational skills that all servant leaders strive to obtain and perfect include the following, among others:
- Empathy
- Respect
- Integrity
- Fairness
- Patience
- Responsibility
- Flexibility
- Self-discipline
I also highly recommend an excellent sense of humor as well as good communication and negotiation skills.
Just as all things in Agile, these are easy to say and much harder to do; what we can do is make it easier to function in an Agile environment and sharpen our aspirational skill sets. Colocation of the team as much as possible, even if only for an iteration or so, will improve communication. Making effective decisions in a collaborative environment, using good negotiation and communication skills, and voting are all needed to reach a conclusion or direction.
The practice of active listening is especially important. By listening actively, you are making sure that you are not thinking of the next thing to say or passing judgment on what you are hearing. Hearing and listening are two different things. The more we listen, the more we hear, and the more we hear, the better our understanding of the information that is being communicated and our chance of retaining it. Active listening can also help you respond effectively to conflict while practicing empathy and understanding to manage it correctly. You will cover conflict resolution a bit later in this chapter.
Motivation
If I were to ask you what motivates you, what would your answer be? Would you say that you’re motivated by money? Would you say that you’re motivated by the work you do? Would you say that you’re motivated because you like the people with whom you work? What motivates each individual is a very personal thing, but there are some common motivators that are identified and can be utilized when practicing servant leadership.
If we look to the past at some of the theorists and experts on psychology and human motivation, it’s easy to see why these philosophies have stood the test of time—from the 1940s until today.
One such theorist is Abraham Maslow. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was first proposed in an article in 1943, and again in his book Motivation and Personality, Third Edition (Longman 1987). Maslow concluded that all humans have several levels of needs and motivations and that all people must have very basic needs met before they can move up the hierarchy. Figure 5.2 shows Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is typically represented in a triangle.
FIGURE 5.2 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Maslow concluded that all humans must first meet their physiological needs of air, food, and water and then safety and freedom from harm followed by love and friendships. Those are the three core needs that all humans need to attain. Once they have met the core needs, they can work on building their esteem and finally reach self-actualization.
Maslow was not convinced that everyone reached self-actualization because that is the level that defines doing things for the greater good and not being self-absorbed. It is also the level where people learn new things about others just because they want to do so. Maslow felt that our society is so caught up in self-esteem and relationships with other people that many humans rarely, if ever, reach self-actualization and stay there. Mostly, we humans are sliding up and down the hierarchy as life throws wrenches at us and forces us to adapt and overcome.
The only reason I bring up Maslow is because his description of self-actualization is very close to what makes a great servant leader. We won’t ever be perfect at it, but we can attempt to put others first and work for the greater good. It’s just something to keep in mind.
A lot of what a good servant leader will do is to practice a bit of intuitive mind reading until they know their team well enough to motivate them accordingly. Something else to keep in mind is that many people are uncomfortable or embarrassed by public displays of recognition of individuals only. In an Agile environment, it is very much a Three Musketeers mentality—all for one and one for all!
Keep a good focus on motivating the team of individuals, get to know them as individuals, and coach and support the team so that they can reach their goals, whether those goals are to make more money, to advance their careers, to work with people they like, or to love the job they do. It takes emotional intelligence, active listening, and transparent communication to build up a team. Your job as an Agile project manager is much more focused on these aspects than pretty much anything else you do.
Conflict Resolution
Conflict isn’t about if—it is about when. If you are like me and give conflict the big dislike, you aren’t alone. Most humans do not like conflict in general—much less in a professional environment. I know there are people who love drama and gossip, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s name just popped into your heads, you know…THAT person! However, most of, if not many, of us would rather not deal with it.
Obviously, there is dysfunctional conflict, typically between individuals, which is tough to manage. The conflict that you’ll be reviewing is professional conflict, or what could be called functional conflict. Perhaps you disagree with the way things are being managed on your projects, or you disagree with a solution that someone is proposing to a problem the team is addressing. Maybe lack of clear expectations or effective communication is causing unnecessary conflict and risk. If you find yourself nodding along, you know what I mean.
What would you say is the number one cause of conflict on your current team?
- Differences in objectives, values, and perceptions?
- Disagreements about roles or responsibilities?
- Technological issues?
- Management styles?
- Scheduling issues?
- Personality issues?
- Lack of communication?
- Lack of support from stakeholders or senior management?
- Unclear expectations?
- Unexpected risk events?
- All of the above?
Most folks would probably say unclear expectations, lack of communication, and personality issues. One of the nice things about Agile is that communication and interactions are such regular occurrences that lack of communication is the last thing to worry about. Effective communication? Well, that is a different story.
As a servant leader, it is your job to make sure that communication is occurring on a regular basis, that you support the team, and that you help the team learn how to deal with conflict in a healthy way. In Chapter 7, “Effective Team Performance on Agile Projects,” you will delve a bit deeper into team development and mastery of skills. However, one of the key aspects of developing a brand-new team is getting them from the forming stage to the performing stage. In Figure 5.3, you’ll see a visual of Tuckman’s Ladder. Bruce Tuckman presented his theory on group or team development in 1965 and expanded upon it in 1977.
FIGURE 5.3 Tuckman’s Ladder
The expansion of the theory included another step called adjourning. This is the step where people leave the team or the team disperses to other projects. The concept is that if one person leaves the team and another person joins the team, everyone will have to reset and repeat the stages, though much more quickly this time.
In an Agile environment, the best practice is to have a core self-directed team that doesn’t adjourn but that works together all of the time. In Tuckman’s Ladder, which is shown in Figure 5.3, the second phase of team development is storming. The team isn’t able to manage conflict totally on their own and may look to the Agile project manager to step in and help guide the resolution. This is due to the team not being completely comfortable with each other, and they may be prone to disagreement on the direction the project should take. You are more likely to see conflict as part of a team storming and moving from storming to constructive disagreement in performing. Teams diverge with conflict and converge with negotiation.
Just as it would be difficult to give you a one-size-fits-all motivation or communication strategy, it’s also difficult to give you a specific way to manage conflict on your team. I can only present ideas and categories of risk responses. Table 5.1 shows the distinct categories of conflict resolution and whether they are considered a good direction or not.
TABLE 5.1 Conflict resolution categories
| Conflict Resolution Strategy | Description |
| Collaborate or Problem Solve | Identifying the underlying problem and working out solutions in a way that allows all parties to work through their disagreements. Recommended as a Win-Win and the longest lasting. Very Agile oriented. |
| Compromise or Reconcile | Finding a middle ground that satisfies all parties to some degree. Considered Lose-lose because both sides have to give up something, but it can be useful. |
| Smoothing or Accommodating | De-emphasizes differences between points of view and focuses on commonalities. Recommended as a Win-win, but short term. Best if used with problem solving and compromise. |
| Forcing or Directing | Requires others to yield to the point of view of one side or another. Not recommended unless necessary. Becomes necessary when a decision must be made quickly or to force regulatory compliance. Win/Lose. |
| Withdrawal/ Avoid | Avoiding or retreating from the conflict or potential conflict and allowing the involved parties to work out the conflict on their own. Not recommended unless it is a very heated or dangerous situation, or it is a strategic withdrawal. Considered Lose-lose. |
I realize that in a conflict situation, you won’t be sitting around saying to yourself, “I’m accommodating.” Many times, conflict is a slow burn that builds over time, or a total and complete surprise. On an Agile team, it is important to encourage the team to discuss things that are causing conflict or problems.
For the most part, you will be coaching your team and helping them to manage functional conflict and reach a consensus. This is especially true when a team is in storming. A performing team is more likely to manage their own conflict without input from the Agile project manager unless absolutely necessary.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Albert Einstein
Adaptive Leadership
This chapter wraps up with adaptive leadership. Even though this chapter and the last one have a much larger focus on stakeholder engagement, we have discussed the team as well. As an adaptive leader and Agile project manager, you must be able to pivot, roll with the punches, and adapt to your environment to lead effectively. This allows you and the development team to focus on value-adds and to reduce waste and thus meet stakeholder expectations.
I read somewhere once that “nobody actually does Agile—they ARE Agile!” This resonated with me because being a servant leader who can adapt is the definition of true agility. The meaning of it is more to the point that Agile is a way of being, not a set process of doing. Even with all of the methodologies and frameworks you have covered, the constant theme throughout all of it is effective and adaptive leadership. It’s a way of being, not of doing.
I’m going to give you a little advice. There’s a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball.
Ty Webb
Caddyshack
Warner Bros., 1980
Inspire, communicate, and collaborate. Easier said than done, right? Nobody expects you to be perfect all of the time. Remember, in Agile there is a no blame culture, so mistakes are expected and embraced. Mistakes are how you learn and how you grow as a leader. You adapt and become a lifelong learner. You manage change effectively, and you practice servant leadership. You resolve issues, provide coaching when needed, and accept coaching when you need it yourself.
Adapting to your team and environment is the crux of being Agile, because no position on an Agile team controls the other. They all have a role to play. Your job is to model best practices and behaviors by practicing them yourself and leading by example.
At any organizational level, people are leaders not because of what they do, but because of who they are.
Jim Highsmith
As you wrap up this chapter on the human side of Agile that corresponds with stakeholder engagement and team development, it’s always a good thing to reflect back and ask yourself, “How can I help my stakeholders, my team, and myself to be more successful today?” You can achieve this by walking the talk and being a lifelong learner. Be the ball!
Summary
This chapter began with an overview of interpersonal skills and the best practices associated with them, including communication and your role as a coach to help avoid a gulf of misunderstanding with your stakeholders.
Then I went over the self-directed team dynamic, and why is it important to be a good coach and block the team from unnecessary disturbances from stakeholders to achieve an effective Agile environment.
Next I reviewed negotiation and other aspirational skills, including motivation and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s important to have a way to identify where your team is in the hierarchy and to help motivate on the level of the team member.
After that, I covered conflict resolution strategies and categories that can be used depending on the situation. Some are considered win-win, while others may only be used in very specific situations.
Finally, I went over the essentials of embracing the mindset of adaptive leadership and being able to inspire, communicate, and collaborate while practicing servant leadership, as well as some of the important things to keep in mind as you lead Agile projects and study for your exams.
Everything that you have covered in this chapter is incorporated into the remaining tasks found in Domain III: Stakeholder Engagement. Now you have a great foundation to move on to other domains and see how some of the best practices that we covered at a surface level can be implemented and utilized on your next project and during your exam.
Exam Essentials
Be able to absorb different interpersonal skills. Understand why it is important to practice good communication to avoid the gulf of misunderstanding with your stakeholders and be able to use emotional intelligence to ask the right questions while actively listening for the answers.
Understand the concept of adaptive leadership. Having the ability to adapt your leadership style based on what stage of development your team is in and to truly understand what your team, product owners, customers, and other stakeholders need from you is the crux of being truly Agile.
Be able to understand the differences between aspirational skills and mandatory skills. Much of the exam will focus on aspirational skills like communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution. It’s also important to read through the Project Management Institute’s Professional Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct because you will be asked to agree and abide by it as an Agile professional.
Understand categories of conflict resolution. Knowing when to problem solve, versus smoothing or compromise, is the sign of an effective leader. Also, knowing when to stay out of a conflict and let your team work through it is equally as important. The majority of conflict on an Agile project team may be due to a misunderstanding of requirements or disagreement on the direction to take with the work. Because communication is constant, conflict is typically less impactful on an Agile team versus a Waterfall team.
Be aware of effective communication techniques. Effective communication is a common theme in all aspects of Agile. In this chapter, you continued reviewing stakeholder engagement tasks to determine the needs of the customer and how to get to the point where your team could start working on priority user stories and produce a usable, done increment. Practicing aspects of communication and adaptive leadership will help you BE more Agile in your communication, as well as to make you a better and more effective servant leader.
Review Questions
You can find the answers to the review questions in Appendix B.
-
Your team disagrees on the direction a requirement should take, and it is convinced that the customer hasn’t explained it correctly. As a servant leader, what can you identify as the reason for the misunderstanding?
- Not enough information was gathered from the customer.
- The gulf of misunderstanding has occurred, and more information is needed to determine the correct direction.
- You should practice good conflict resolution skills.
- Team knowledge is limited because they are in the storming stage.
-
Bill and Ally are having a disagreement in the break room about something they saw on the news the night before. You are walking by, and you overhear the disagreement. As a servant leader, what is the best conflict resolution technique to utilize in this situation?
- Help them reach a compromise.
- Tell them to stop the disagreement, as it is inappropriate at work.
- Try to get them to compromise.
- Avoid getting involved as it isn’t relevant to project work.
-
Your team has been working together for several iterations now, and they seem to be working well together. They are making decisions as a team and determining what work they should do and when. This is an example of which of the following?
- A storming team
- An Agile team
- A self-directed team
- An adjourning team
-
As an Agile team member, you are working with the product owner and the customer on several of the user stories and requirements the customer is requesting. You witness the product owner suggesting that the customer choose one requirement over another because it will function better with their result, and the customer agrees that it is win-win for everyone. What did the product owner do effectively?
- Negotiation
- Requirement gathering
- User story development
- Servant leadership
-
Task 5 of the exam content outline for stakeholder engagement states that you will need to establish collaborative behaviors among the members of the organization by fostering group decision making and conflict resolution in order to improve decision quality and reduce the time required to make decisions. If there is a conflict and you have an option, which of the following is the best conflict resolution strategy?
- Compromise
- Smoothing
- Collaboration
- Avoiding
-
Your team has reached the performing phase. What types of management and leadership do they need?
- A lot of feedback and interactions
- Feedback, coaching, and help only when they ask for it
- Help with conflict resolution and expectation settings
- Helping getting to know each other and building trust
-
The team space is key in Agile projects. What is the one thing that is recommended above all others for Agile teams?
- Scrum boards
- Colocation
- Caves and common rooms
- Information radiators
-
On a colocated team, what is one of the major benefits of everyone sitting together in the same work space?
- The Scrum Master can find everyone.
- Daily stand-up meetings are easier to organize.
- It enables improved communication.
- It builds relationships and trust.
-
Your newly formed team is experiencing some conflict in the way they estimate time. Several team members have withdrawn from the conversations, while others are still arguing about the best ways to do things. This is an example of what team stage?
- Forming
- Norming
- Storming
- Adjourning
-
As an Agile project manager, you explain to your team that, as their coach, you are there to provide for the team’s needs and remove any roadblocks to their progress. This is also described as which one of the following?
- Project management
- Agile leadership
- Management and leadership
- Adaptive leadership
-
Misunderstandings of value, product, and customer needs can best be described as which one of the following?
- The gulf of evaluation
- The gulf of Agile
- The gulf of misunderstanding
- The gulf value stream
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For an Agile project manager, active listening is an important aspect to practicing adaptive leadership. If a stakeholder is talking to you about an issue, what should be your primary focus?
- Solving their problem
- Assessing their facial features
- Thinking of what you will say next
- Listening to what the person is saying and assessing the information
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Your stakeholders are engaged in a conversation about what direction to go in with an aspect of the software that is being built. The team is divided on how to proceed. The conflict is more of a collective disagreement than an outright conflict. What should you do as the Agile project manager?
- Engage in the conversation, and help the team solve the issue.
- Call a meeting to have a formal discussion about the issue.
- Discuss conflict resolution techniques at the next retrospective.
- Do nothing.
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One of your stakeholders is asking about your PMI-ACP certification and wonders what code of ethics you need to abide by as a certified professional. You explain that there are two categories of conduct you abide by. Which of the following describes these categories?
- Legal and aspirational
- Motivational and legal
- Mandatory and motivational
- Mandatory and aspirational
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During a heated exchange over what the definition of done is to the stakeholders, you have determined that there isn’t any way anyone is going to be able to collaborate on solutions. Which of the following conflict resolution strategies would work best in this situation?
- Compromise
- Forcing
- Withdrawal
- Smoothing
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In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, what term expresses a person who has everything and determines that they will give back for the greater good?
- Social
- Physiological
- Safety
- Self-actualization
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You and your development team are working with the product owner on user stories in the backlog. Your team is asking questions about what stories will be done next and what they think that they can accomplish. The product owner asks the team to consider adding two more stories to the sprint for the customer, and the team explains that they are unable to do any additional stories. The product owner explains why it is important, and the team agrees to take on one more story but not two. What does this exchange represent?
- A poorly run negotiation
- A balanced win-win negotiation
- The product owner overstepping their position
- Good communication
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Engaging with stakeholders involves having the emotional intelligence to understand their concerns and to work to determine what they value. In order to be effective in this role, which of the following skills are necessary?
- Interpersonal skills
- Adaptive leadership
- Creating an elevator statement
- Having a detailed planning meeting
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One of your stakeholders is new to Agile and is asking that the team take on more user stories per iteration to get things done faster. As an adaptive servant leader, what is the best thing to do?
- Listen to what they are saying, and then explain to them that they should go talk to the product owner.
- Tell them no.
- Listen to their concerns, but explain the concept of a self-directed team.
- Negotiate with them to protect the team from interruptions.
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You are a product owner, and you are working to sort various user stories by value during the current sprint. A key stakeholder comes to you in the middle of the current sprint and asks you to add a feature that was deemed unnecessary by the customer. What is the best thing to do?
- Call a team meeting and explain that you are adding another feature to the increment in the middle of the sprint.
- Tell the Agile project manager, and let them deliver the message to the team.
- Explain to the stakeholder that the feature will be put at the back of the backlog for a potential future revisit, but right now the customer doesn’t see it as valuable.
- Tell the key stakeholder that the best thing to do is bring it up at the next sprint planning meeting and discuss it then.