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PMP Practice: Identify and Analyze Conflict Sources

Question 5 of 10 in Manage Conflicts

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Rio Fontaine-Baptiste is leading a nine-month regulatory compliance project for Churro Lightning Co, a shipping company implementing new customs tracking systems across 12 distribution centers. The project follows a detailed Gantt chart with dependencies across legal, IT, and operations teams. Two weeks ago, the operations director insisted on adding real-time dashboards not in the approved scope, while the IT manager argues this would require rearchitecting the database layer and delay the mandatory compliance deadline by six weeks. Both leaders have stopped attending joint planning sessions and are now communicating only through their respective team members, creating confusion about priorities. The project charter clearly defines the compliance deadline as non-negotiable due to regulatory penalties. What should Rio do to address this conflict?
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Correct answer: Meet individually with both leaders to understand their underlying concerns, then facilitate a joint session focused on how to achieve compliance by the deadline while exploring post-launch enhancements for the dashboard request

Explanation

This conflict requires direct facilitation by the project manager using a collaborative problem-solving approach. The scenario presents competing stakeholder interests within a predictive project that has fixed constraints (regulatory deadline, approved scope, interdependent schedule). The project manager should first understand each leader's underlying needs through individual conversations, then bring them together to solve the problem collaboratively. This approach addresses both the interpersonal conflict (leaders avoiding each other) and the substantive issue (scope versus deadline). The closing fact that both leaders have stopped attending joint sessions makes relationship repair and direct facilitation the clear priority. The solution acknowledges the operations director's business need while protecting the non-negotiable compliance deadline, potentially by exploring the dashboard as a future phase. This maintains stakeholder relationships while keeping the project on track.

**Why not A:** Routing the request through formal change control is a valid procedural step but does not address the interpersonal breakdown between the two leaders. Both have stopped attending joint planning sessions and are communicating only through intermediaries, making relationship repair the immediate priority before any formal process can be effective.

**Why not C:** Escalating the conflict to the project sponsor before attempting direct facilitation is premature. The project manager has the responsibility and opportunity to facilitate a resolution by understanding both parties' concerns and finding common ground, especially given the non-negotiable compliance deadline that frames the discussion.

**Why not D:** Recommending a transition to agile in the middle of a predictive project with a fixed Gantt chart, regulatory deadlines, and cross-team dependencies is inappropriate. The project's structure exists for valid reasons, and changing methodology would introduce significant disruption without addressing the core interpersonal conflict.

Key Concept

This question covers Identify and Analyze Conflict Sources under Manage Conflicts (People).

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