Nikolaev Advisory
IT Team Conflict: Restoring Effective Management
A real case from individual practice. Names and identifying details are withheld.
Situation
The founder and CTO of a B2B SaaS company with 45 employees faced a divided development team after a team lead change. Complaints, resistance to tasks and conflict disrupted delivery. Two key senior developers were considering leaving.
The founder spent 8-12 hours per week resolving disputes. Tasks affected by conflict took an average of 11 days to close.
Format and focus
12 individual weekly sessions, focusing on the founder’s decisions and actions: restoring management effectiveness and moving resolution of work disagreements to the team.
What changed
Weeks 1-3: mapping interests, influence and the difference between personal complaints and role conflicts.
Weeks 4-6: agreeing communication rules and the first area of responsibility transferred to the team lead.
Weeks 7-9: the founder organised changes to code review and planning and addressed a recurring conflict pattern.
Weeks 10-12: reinforcing working routines and reviewing results.
| Week | eNPS | Escalations/week | Sprint plan completed | Founder’s conflict workload |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | −18 | 7 | 62% | 10-12 h/week |
| 4 | −6 | 4 | 71% | 7-8 h/week |
| 8 | +11 | 2 | 84% | 3-4 h/week |
| 12 | +27 | 0-1 | 93% | 1-1.5 h/week |
Reading the measures
eNPS reflects employees’ willingness to recommend the company as a workplace, on a −100 to +100 scale. Sprint completion here means work delivered against the plan, rather than a universal measure of developer productivity.
Outcome
One of the two senior developers stayed and contributed to the changes. The other left with an agreed handover. The team lead took over much of the resolution of disagreements.
The team began resolving conflict at its own level. The founder recovered around 8-9 hours per week and could focus on the product roadmap for the next quarter.
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