Driving Technical Change [Paperback]

Terrence Ryan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 27, 2010

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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Terrence Ryan currently works as an Evangelist for Adobe Systems. He focuses on the promotion of ColdFusion, Flash, Flex and AIR. As an evangelist his job is to encourage people to try new tools and techniques. Before that, he spent ten years in higher education overseeing the work of a team of developers, running code reviews, pushing standards, and trying to convince co-workers to come around to new tools and techniques.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf; 1 edition (November 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934356603
• ISBN-13: 978-1934356609
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,280 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Terrence Ryan currently works as a Flash Platform Evangelist for Adobe Systems. As an evangelist his job is to encourage people to try new tools and techniques. Before that, he spent ten years in higher education overseeing the work of a team of developers, running code reviews, pushing standards, and trying to convince co-workers to come around to new tools and techniques.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid Positive Advice, December 2, 2010

By 

Emily Christiansen - See all my reviews

This review is from: Driving Technical Change (Paperback)

This book employs a conversational tone and very positive attitude to help developers sell their teammates on new technology. Terry defines the common patterns of skeptics and gives a brief description. He is also quick to emphasize that you must treat your skeptic with respect. They're not automatically bad people because they disagree with you. Then Terry launches into the different types of strategies you can use, and which skeptics they work on. Don't be fooled by the book's small size. There is a lot of great advice and it is a fun book to read. You could get through it in a weekend and go into work on Monday ready to counter skeptics with the facts in a polite and positive manner.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some useful advise, December 13, 2010

By 

Bas Vodde (Singapore) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Driving Technical Change (Paperback)

Driving Technical Change is about exactly that. If you have an idea, a new tool or technique then how to you convince others that it is actually a good idea. What are the techniques you could use to convince the 'skeptics'.

This book consist of three parts (ignoring the introduction section in the beginning). The first part defines types of stereotypical resisters. The second part defines techniques to convince them and the third provides a strategy on how to use these techniques.

The first part defines seven types of stereotypical resisters: the uninformed, the herd, the burned, the cynic, the time crunched, the boss and the irrational. The author uses these stereotypes as extremes which he then can explain the techniques with. I personally was very uncomfortable with these seven stereotypes and didn't think of them as useful thinking tools. Grouping people in boxes like this is incredibly counter productive.

The second part defines techniques to use to convince 'skeptics'. Most the the techniques were fairly obvious, such as deliver the message or find synergy. I liked the fact that the author focused a lot on solving the right problem rather than selling what you believe in and that the author focused on gaining expertise first. It makes the techniques less like silver bullet tools that will solve all your problems.

The last part was about strategy. It describes how to first convince people who are ready and not to waste your effort on people who are not ready. I think this is sound advise. However, in the end the author suggested that it was a good idea to convince management to enforce a policy. I regret that there is still such a command & control traditional management aspect in the book. As the author later shares in his own story, advise like this frequently backfires to policies being enforced that aren't useful anymore.

Driving Technical Change is about 130 pages. It is an easy and quick read. The advise is useful, however the stereotypes are IMHO a little dangerous. The only advise I disagreed with was the strong management enforcing comments made in the end. Overall, the book had some good ideas, yet I wouldn't recommend this book when driving technical change. Instead I'd point people to Linda Rising and Mary Lynn Manns change patterns book called Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas. So, the book isn't bad, but it isn't very good either. I'd go for between 2 and 3 stars and decided to go to 3 stars because it is an easy read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sage advice on dealing with office politics, November 19, 2010

By 

Mr. Jeremy Flowers "Working on Grails portal" (Milton Keynes, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Driving Technical Change (Paperback)

Reading through this book, Terrance classifies people into different groups.
For me this was a vivid portrayal, that I could instantly relate to having working with the full spectrum of such people.
He gives advice on how to handle these groups of people, and basically create allies, converting the masses to your cause, but in such a way as to not come across as blowing your own trumpet.
In essence this boils down to converting the low hanging fruit (colleagues) to your cause and gradually tackling the more challenging ones. Garnering such support you don't appear to be a lone crusader when presenting your case to management and if you heed the advice given on handling situations correctly, you can avoid appearing confrontational.
It also clarifies how to allocate and your time productively building relationships with colleagues and not expending effort on the irrational.
Some of the IT terminology would be alien to people outside this arena, but the psychology lessons could equally be applied to other industries.
A good book, I could have done with reading years ago. As a result I'd probably have a few less battle scars right now! Going forward I'm sure it's something that will help me in my career.
Oh. On a final note, I learnt about Google Alerts. Had never used them before. Cool tip.