What types of conflicts can occur among project manager line manager and functional manager during the project life cycle and what modes should be used for their resolution?

Answer 1

Many types of conflicts derive directly from the inherent nature of projects, not from the people involved. By assigning blame for conflict to various people involved in the project, you push the energy in a negative direction. By understanding that people in conflict are the potential means for positive outcomes, you begin to develop the mindset needed to vitalize people from conflicts.

Conflicts occur for a variety of reasons. Project leaders report that conflicts typically arise over the following seven points of contention. Note that the first six are related more to the situation than to the people in the situation. People are not the source of conflict; they are the players in the situation. Indeed, they are the means for turning conflict into positive energy. Conflicts stem from these seven sources:

1. Priorities of tasks and objectives. Participants often have different views about the proper sequence of tasks and about the importance of tasks and objectives. Such differences occur not only within the project team but also between the project team and other support groups, as well as between the team and the client.

2. Administrative procedures. Disagreements often arise over how a project will be managed---for example, over the definition of the project leader's reporting relationships and responsibilities, operational requirements, interdepartmental work agreements, and levels of administrative support.

3. Technical opinions. The less routine a project, the more likely it is that there are differences of opinion about the "best way" to accomplish the task. Disagreements may arise over specifications, technical trade-offs, and techniques to achieve the required performance. For example, the director and the film editor on a movie project may have entirely different and competing viewpoints on how best to achieve a certain effect with the camera and special effects.

4. Staffing and resource allocations. Conflicts arise over how best to allocate people to various projects and within project assignments. One team member complains that she always gets the "grunt work" while others get the glamorous assignments. Not only do individuals disagree over which projects their functional manager should assign them to, but they also face competing demands from their project leader and functional manager. This leads to both interpersonal strife and personal stress.

5. Costs and budgets. "How much is this going to cost?" and "Why is this costing so much?" are frequent sources of disagreement throughout a project. These differences often arise because it is difficult to estimate costs in the face of uncertainty. A functional support group, for example, may see the funds allocated by the project leader as insufficient for the work requested, while the client may feel that costs are too high.

6. Schedules. A constant source of tension is the client asking "How long is this going to take?" while the project team feels "I don't have enough time allocated to do a quality job." The tension really arises because we are dealing with estimates about the future, and the future can seldom be predicted with certainty. At the other extreme, if in making our estimates we take into account all the possible things that could happen, the project might never be completed. Further, tension is often generated around the sequencing of events, as in the case of "Finish the documentation on this project before starting to program the next portion of the new accounting system."

7. Interpersonal and personality clashes. Conflicts arise not just over technical issues but also over "style" or "ego centered" issues like status, power, control, self-esteem, and friendships. Such conflicts may emerge from real personality and style differences, but often they are based on differences that emerge from departmental or organizational factors like varying past experience and different perspectives on time horizons.