Globalisation has forced organisations to maintain an effective and efficient technology (Saniuk & Saniuk 2018). Agile as a methodology largely adopted in software development environments facilities and manages this challenge of an unpredictable, ever-changing market demands through dependency on ‘people and their creativity instead of on the processes’ (Rix et al. 2016); however, wherever people are involved in groups, the risk of conflict risk is imminent. To achieve the benefits associated with the adoption of Agile, an effective team, which leads to effective projects implementation, is the foundation (Emejom et al. 2019). According to Chaudhry and Asif (2015), effective conflict-risk management is an organisation’s strategic advantage and an enabler of efficient Agile development environment. Nevertheless, the ‘trick’ to this efficiency is effective mitigation of such conflict risk (Gren 2017). Conflict risk that is effectively mitigated yields positive team interactions and engagements (Gren 2017). Studies by Crawford et al. (2014), Sudhakar (2015) and Nesterkin and Porterfield (2016) agreed on the following benefits of effectively managed conflict risk within project teams:

When there is accomplishment of the above benefits within an Agile environment, there is likelihood of successful, an effective team environment, which positively influences the attainment of successful implementations of various Agile projects within organisations (Sudhakar 2015).

According to Nesterkin and Porterfield (2016), effective conflict-risk management refers to the process of managing conflicts, and it entails the development of constructive strategies to mitigate the dysfunctions caused by conflict that arise in a group of people. Balbes (2014) supported this fact by suggesting that this escalates the constructive and productive outcomes of conflict that improves team effectiveness. Effectively managing conflict risk yields effective team relationships, and effective team relations then lead to effective communication, which is a critical element to any task success (Deshpande 2014). Crawford et al. (2014) indicated that Agile teams require an effective conflict management strategy. This attains a strong mixture of constructive and negative outcomes of conflicts within projects, which then results in productive, solid team relationships (Gren 2017). Software projects success relies heavily on effective team relationships, because this affects the effectiveness of communication among team members (Deshpande 2014). The criticality of ensuring effective conflict-risk management within software development environments, specifically Agile environments, is one element that needs thorough investigation and possible solutions.

Agile was first introduced as an iterative approach for software development (Beck et al. 2001). It is an approach to software development that employs rolling wave development, incremental and iterative delivery, rapid and flexible constant response to change and most importantly, advocates for communication between all project stakeholders, including team members and customers (Vithana, Asirvatham & Johar 2019). Agile employs organisational models based on people, collaborations and overall shared values (PMI 2018). Agile entails an action or technique based on nimbleness, changeability, adaptiveness or flexibility (Balashova & Gromova 2017). The idea of Agile or ‘agility’ has existed in the software sector since the 1990s and its success and wide adoption have been realised across the world (O’Leary, Cota & Otis 2017). The Agile approach has insighted organisations to realise the benefit in valuing outcome over rules, encouraging broader participation over control, focussing on continual change response as well as promoting self-organisation over centralised governance (Khalil & Kotaiah 2018). Agile is currently the vast adopted project management methodology within the IT development sector, with over 58% of companies implementing Agile or a hybrid of Agile and other methodologies, such as waterfall, scrum or six sigma (Asirvatham et al. 2018).

The current literature indicates the following as some of the main goals to implement IT projects in Agile (Ching & Mutuc 2019; Shankarmani et al. 2012; Vithana et al. 2019):

Constant achievement of the above Agile software project goals facilitates digital transformations within organisations and provides organisations with the ability to keep up with the constant market demands (Mbelli & Hira 2016). Effective response to the critical urge for digital transformation is the driver behind organisations’ survival or failure in today’s world. The success or failure mainly depends on the organisation’s ability to provide products and services more effectively and efficiently than its current, relevant competitors using technology and digital means. This is what the existing literature refers to as technology competitiveness (Kohnová, Papula & Salajová 2019).

The findings depict several facts around the tested issues of conflict as a risk in Agile teams within South African (SA) companies. Firstly, the findings show affirming results on the existence of conflict risk among Agile teams in SA. The existing literature (Balbes 2014; Crawford et al. 2014; Gren 2017) has tested this theory within Agile environments in other countries. Researchers such as Sudhakar (2015), Nesterkin and Porterfield (2016) and Gren and Lenberg (2018) have investigated conflict and its significant presence within software development teams. The study findings show that about 76/179 participants, which makes over 40% of the participants experienced conflict risk or some sort of disagreement within their respective Agile teams (Table 2). These findings correlate with Gren (2017), which indicated conflict as a risk within Agile teams. This shows tremendous importance on conflict as a risk element and its constructive management in teams to have smooth relations among team members who can lead to an effective working team environment. A need for an effective technique or method to mitigate and manage such risk is vital. The frequency results for conflict existence are shown (Table 2).

In addition to the questions on conflict-risk existence presented to participants concerning their current Agile teams, more questions on the impact of such risk were presented, which included: (1) to state whether most of the conflicts they experienced led to constructive discussions or dysfunctional, non-constructive disagreements. (2) Also, participants had to provide the outcomes of such conflict-risk effect on their team relations. (3) Lastly, participants were questioned on the existence of constructive ways of managing conflict risk within their respective Agile teams and its benefits towards set Agile teams (Table 3), project goals. The study findings on these tested theories as well as respective percentages of the quantitative data collected are shown (Figure 1 and Figure 2).

The study findings depicted two kinds of outcomes conflict existence brought within Agile (Table 3) which are constructive as depicted (Figure 2) and dysfunctional conflict outcomes as depicted (Figure 1). The first outcome, constructive conflict, conveyed a positive effect within teams. This kind of conflict outcome was brought by effectively managed conflict risk, and this yielded a functional team environment. This finding on functional conflict and its tremendous advantages for an Agile environment is in line with the studies of Balbes (2014) that investigated the theory of making conflict management a strategic advantage within Agile teams.

The benefit of attaining the ‘right product’ because of functional conflict risk has been fully explored in a study by Crawford et al. (2014).

This study finding also determined the outcomes of constructive conflict in Agile teams, which concur with findings in the current literature by researchers Nesterkin and Porterfield (2016) and Thomas (2017). The other impact of conflict in Agile teams, identified by the study, is one that brings a negative impact to the working relations among team members. This occurs when conflict risk has not been effectively mitigated and managed. Various researchers including Chaudhry and Asif (2015) and Kiitam et al. (2016) have suggested that conflict risk within development teams most times brings negative outcomes because it yields to several repercussions like the lack of timely communication. A lack of timely communication then affects effective team discussions and negotiations as well as feedback, which reduces team performance.

The correlations analysis between the benefits of effective conflict-risk management and Agile goals is shown (Table 4). The objective of this analysis was to check if there is any correlation between the two variables. To test the significant relationships if any, Pearson’s correlation is used. According to Pallant (2016) with Pearson’s correlation, it is also possible to determine the strength of the relationships above just showing relationships. This indicates how much each variable determines or correlates with other variables. The Pearson’s correlations r values indicate numbers between 0 and 1 and there are specific rules that guide the interpretation of these numbers (Fricker et al. 2019; Pallant 2016). The following rules according to Pallant (2016) apply when interpreting r values to determine the strength of relationships:

Based on the results (Table 4), the following were concluded.

Conflict as a risk in Agile teams has been explored in current literature; however, there is no research that has directly established a link between effective conflict-risk management within Agile teams towards organisations ability to attain technology adequacy and competitiveness. Researchers Crawford et al. (2014); Saxena et al. (2016) and Gren (2017) have investigated the conflict within Agile environments, its relative sources as well as means of handling and managing it to enable better team collaborations. Effective teams are the ground work for every successful organisation, and organisations generally fail at their strategic goals if they lack effective teams (Kiitam et al. 2016). Organisations without teams who work well together normally struggle, even with the simplest task implemented, while effective teams support in improved quality, facilitation of the completion of projects and aid in increasing productivity and efficiency (Anumah 2017). Effectiveness of the team is the foundation for successful Agile development and successful implementation of Agile projects (Hoda & Noble 2017). Effective continuous delivery of successful Agile projects within the organisations is the foundation of the organisations’ ability to keep up with the fast-paced technological world, and hence constantly be able to survive the technology-based competition and needs (Morris et al. 2015).

According to Galli (2018), team effectiveness can be described as the capability for a team to achieve the goals or objectives set by authorised employees or by the organisation. Agile methodology advocacy for frequent team interactions and constant customer collaborations throughout the project life cycle signifies that there should be some degree to effective management of disagreements that arise, as this would have a direct effect to future team interactions (Hummel, Rosenkranz & Holten 2016). According to Crawford et al. (2014) and Balbes (2014), when conflict risk within Agile teams is mishandled and mismanaged, the effect of the risk becomes negative to the future team interactions and collaborations. However, when conflict risk is effectively managed, it leads to constructive sharing of views, ideas and opinions among team members (Crawford et al. 2014). The constructive sharing of views, ideas and opinions leads to smarter solutions of handling the project, and hence improves the team effectiveness (Balbes 2014). The results as indicated (Figure 3) illustrate that effective conflict-risk management enables Agile goals, while Agile goals facilitate organisational goals for adopting Agile to ensure that there is improved technology competitiveness.