Driving Technical Change

Your co-workers’ resistance to new technologies can be baffling. Logical arguments can fail. If you don’t do politics, you will fail. With Driving Technical Change, by Terrence Ryan, you’ll learn to read users’ “patterns of resistance”-and then dismantle their objections. Every developer must master the art of evangelizing. With these techniques and strategies, you’ll help your organization adopt your solutions-without selling your soul to organizational politics.

Finding cool languages, tools, or development techniques is easy-new ones are popping up every day. Convincing co-workers to adopt them is the hard part. The problem is political, and in political fights, logic doesn’t win for logic’s sake. Hard evidence of a superior solution is not enough. But that reality can be tough for programmers to overcome.

In Driving Technical Change: Why People On Your Team Don’t Act on Good Ideas, and How to Convince Them They Should, Adobe software evangelist Terrence Ryan breaks down the patterns and types of resistance technologists face in many organizations.

You’ll get a rich understanding of what blocks users from accepting your solutions. From that, you’ll get techniques for dismantling their objections-without becoming some kind of technocratic Machiavelli.

In Part I, Ryan clearly defines the problem. Then in Part II, he presents “resistance patterns”-there’s a pattern for each type of person resisting your technology, from The Uninformed to The Herd, The Cynic, The Burned, The Time Crunched, The Boss, and The Irrational. In Part III, Ryan shares his battle-tested techniques for overcoming users’ objections. These build on expertise, communication, compromise, trust, publicity, and similar factors. In Part IV, Ryan reveals strategies that put it all together-the patterns of resistance and the techniques for winning buy-in. This is the art of organizational politics.

In the end, change is a two-way street: In order to get your co-workers to stretch their technical skills, you’ll have to stretch your soft skills. This book will help you make that stretch without compromising your resistance to playing politics. You can overcome resistance-however illogical-in a logical way.

Table of Contents

part 1 Introduction
chapter 1 Why This Book?
chapter 2 Defining the Problem
chapter 3 Solve the Right Problem

part 2 Skeptic Patterns
chapter 4 Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?
chapter 5 The Uninformed
chapter 6 The Herd
chapter 7 The Cynic
chapter 8 The Burned
chapter 9 The Time Crunched
chapter 10 The Boss
chapter 11 The Irrational

part 3 Techniques
chapter 12 Filling Your Toolbox
chapter 13 Gain Expertise
chapter 14 Deliver Your Message
chapter 15 Demonstrate Your Technique
chapter 16 Propose Compromise
chapter 17 Create Trust
chapter 18 Get Publicity
chapter 19 Focus on Synergy
chapter 20 Build a Bridge
chapter 21 Create Something Compelling

part 4 Strategy
chapter 22 Simple, Not Easy
chapter 23 Ignore the Irrational
chapter 24 Target the Willing
chapter 25 Harness the Converted
chapter 26 Sway Management
chapter 27 Final Thoughts