Analysis of questions from attached resource files

Conflict Resolution in it Management

What is the importance of having rules of engagement to successfully support a virtual team when using collaborative technologies? Can you come up with any other rules that could be added?

Rules of engagement within a virtual team using collaborative technologies are crucial to the success of any major team project for several reasons. For example, business units and team members in different areas typically utilize very different systems and procedures to accomplish their component tasks and responsibilities. Changes made and commitments promised to clients by one business unit or team member without consulting other business units and team members can radically affect those business units or team members or even make it impossible for them to complete their respective contributions to the project.

Some other helpful types of rules of engagement that could be added might include:

The appointment of designated team or unit liaisons for every team or unit to facilitate communications and field questions or direct concerns generated by other business units or team members. The respective team liaisons would maintain more regular contact than the rest of their respective teams with one another.

The mandatory consultation between business units and teams and coordination of their respective needs and concerns in advance of any proposed changes and (especially) in advance of any communications or promises with clients.

A shared informal bulletin board for any concerns that is accessible to all team members.

2. Choose a conflict that you observed (and possibly experienced) on a project with which you were involved. Describe the conflict and analyze it using the discussion of Verma et al. (Marchewka, pp. 314-315). What technique(s) were used to resolve the conflict?

I am fundamentally opposed to the Interactionist notion of ever creating conflict for any reason. Virtually any collaborative team situation in the vocational environment is already charged with potential conflicts capable of erupting at any time. The nature of working with others already provides sufficient opportunity to achieve any positive growth for change arising from conflict without purposely "stirring the pot" for any reason. One situation that comes to mind involved a collaborative process involving different teams where each team insisted on procedures that complicated the work of the other team.

In principle, our supervisors believed that avoidance as a means of conflict resolution should be avoided, except in the context of teaching employees to avoid conflicts that are entirely unnecessary and therefore, avoidable. Otherwise, avoidance is not an effective approach because it is an organizational analog to psychological repression in individuals and, as in the case of psychological repression, will undoubtedly result in magnifying the original problem and/or allowing it to manifest in other ways. Likewise, they believed that Accommodation would only delay resolution of similar problems and require piecemeal resolution on subsequent projects. Management made clear to both teams that if the matter could not be resolved between the teams, the manager would have to make the decision himself, using his authority under the Forcing approach.