This book is about a problem techies encounter regularly: I want us to use a specific tool or technique at work, and I need to figure out how to get my team to buy-in. As a book on that topic, it succeeds quite well.
First, a disclaimer: I have a lot of experience in this area, as I worked somewhat recently with a team that was resistant to a lot of changes. I, along with a small handful of other members, repeatedly tried to get buy-in on tools and techniques. Occasionally, we were met with success, but more often we were met with failure.
This book made a LOT of sense of what happened at that company. After reading it, I have a much better understanding of why we failed and succeeded when we did, and what we could have done differently.
Driving Technical Change is a patterns book. Rather than design or architecture patterns, it contains people patterns. The author, Terrence Ryan, argues that most people who are resistant to change fall into one of seven patterns of skepticism. Each pattern is different, and must be dealt with in different ways. As with design patterns, a lot of the patterns are just common sense, but because Ryan gives a very specific name to each pattern, it is useful as a shared vocabulary among forward-thinking techies. It's not immediately obvious from the titles of the patterns exactly what they all mean, so it's helpful to read the book; when I looked at just the titles of the chapters I couldn't decide what one particular co-worker was, but after reading the book I completely knew.
The rest of the book is devoted to different strategies, and which ones are effective against which skeptic patterns. This portion of the book is also useful, though occasionally it feels a bit padded due to structure. Again, it's a lot of common sense, but the author words it in a way that makes it really hit home. There are only a few books that I feel really help tech-minded developers grow the soft skills that they really need to thrive in the industry, and I wouldn't hesitate to add Driving Technical Change to that list.
Though a lot of it is common sense, it can be argued that most of the seminal The Pragmatic Programmer is also common sense. Both are worth reading. Driving Technical Change still gave me some moments to think about and some good advice to internalize, and I'd recommend it for someone forward-thinking in the software industry.
Some people might argue that the book's attitude, which effectively categorizes those who resist changes you are trying to implement at work as enemy combatants, is antagonistic. In an ideal world, all technical change would be a group decision, and the entire team would drive things forward together. It would be nice if this were true, but anyone who has worked in the industry for a little while knows that this is a naive viewpoint. The fact is, when you're certain that a particular tool or technique would help your team and your product, there are sometimes people who put barrier after barrier in your way. It's nearly unavoidable to see these people as enemies (or at least, obstacles). This book doesn't pussy-foot around this fact, it acknowledges it and provides strategies for defeating hostile co-workers. If this seems too harsh to you, I'd recommend giving the book a second look two or three years from now when you'll see things more as they are.
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