STARWEST 2009: Resistance as a Resource: Moving Your Organization to Higher Quality

As a tester, you are an agent of change and a creative, intelligent, and insightful member of your team. You have good ideas about how to improve your organization and its products. You make your proposal. You hear: "We tried that before, and it didn't work"; "We've never done that before"; “That's not a bug, it works as designed"; and a chorus of "No real user would ever do something like that!" You're getting resistance. So, what do you do? Dale Emery explores an approach that works to resolve resistance and help your organization move to higher quality. Whatever else it may be, resistance is information-information about others’ values and beliefs, about the organization, about the change you are proposing, and about you as a change agent. Dale explores how to turn resistance from a frustration into a resource, how to interpret people's responses as valuable information, and how to translate that information into effective action to improve yourself, your organization, and its products.