People resist an Agile approach for many different reasons. Each act of resistance carries with it information about how people feel about adopting new ideas. Introducing change requires an understanding of the root cause of an individual’s resistance, learning from it, then helping that person overcome it.
Learning how to change and accept new ways of approaching problems requires an open mind and willingness to adopt new perspectives.
Long-time employees often don’t want to give up control because they feel like they are being forced to do something they don’t want to do. People will resist learning when they fear a loss of control over their success. If people do not embrace change, they may not see the value of ongoing training. If people don’t feel as though they are appreciated, they will likely not adopt an open and free willingness to learn.
Resistant learners can cause havoc by silently undermining your training with their body language and gestures. Others may share their negativity covertly, during small group discussions or breaks. Some may verbally challenge every point you make, or try to draw you into an emotional or heated exchange. All can disrupt a project by creating tension and negativity.
A solution for dealing with resistance to change, is to get the people involved to “participate” in making the change. The key to the problem is to understand the true nature of resistance.
A skeptic is someone who does not agree with the principles or practices being introduced, and passively resists the transition.
saboteurs resist the transition more from a dislike than support for whatever process exists currently. Unlike a skeptic, a saboteur provides active resistance by trying to undermine the transition effort, perhaps by continuing to write lengthy up-front design documents, and so on.
Followers are usually not enraged by the prospect of change, so they do little more than hope it passes like a fad.
Diehards are those who like the status quo and who actively resist changing from it. They often attempt to prevent the transition by rallying others to their cause.
Changing processes is even harder because a process is a system designed to resist change, think about it. If every new type of requirement or defect that came along required a change to our development process, we would be in trouble. Processes are deliberately designed to resist change, which makes throwing them out or morphing them, more difficult.
People need to be convinced of the benefits of a new idea before they are willing to invest the effort of having to learn it. Many adults do very little learning. They just want to understand the easiest path through their regular work day and stick to it. Expecting people to think, learn, and adapt to new methods in addition to doing their job is like increasing their workload while keeping their pay the same – not that appealing.