Agile Development Practices East 2010: Resistance as a Resource

As a developer or tester, you are a creative, intelligent, and insightful member of your team. Whether you know it or not, you also are a change agent. When you have an apparently good idea about how to improve, you may sometimes hear "We tried that before, and it didn't work" or "We've never done it that way here" or "No real user would ever do something like that!" What you're meeting is resistance. So, what do you do? Dale Emery explores an approach to resolve resistance and help you and your organization move to a higher plane as a learning organization. Whatever else it may be, resistance is information-about others' values and beliefs, about the organization, about the change you are proposing, and about you as a change agent. Find out how to turn resistance from a frustration into a resource that translates into actions to improve yourself, your organization, and its products.