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However, while these techniques are useful and proven, they are not cure-alls. It’s possi-
ble to run across organizational problems or roadblocks that are beyond your ability to fix
(for example, there may not be enough money to hire a test team). The Achilles’ heel of
the approach to improving organizations that’s described in the first part of this book is
that there are people who will resist change for irrational and emotional reasons, and, if
they have more power than you in your organization, you simply may not be able to
make the changes that your projects need.

You can’t stop people from being averse to change, and you can’t always stop them from
shooting down your ideas. Even if your ideas make perfect sense, you may still be unable
to implement them simply because there is someone above you in your organization who
feels uncomfortable with your proposed changes. However, if you are creative, forgiving,
and flexible, the most daunting organizational problems can be addressed and sometimes
even overcome.

One important element for successful change is understanding how the people in your
organization think about and react to changes. Good planning, along with some under-
standing of the psychology of the people affected, will help convince people to accept
them. By understanding the ways people think about and react to change, and by apply-
ing certain techniques that may make them more comfortable with the changes, you can
improve your chances at successfully changing your organization.
Prepare Your Organization
Before you can begin to implement changes, you need to deal with the attitudes that will
cause people to reject those changes. It’s up to you to figure out your organization’s cul-
ture. Try to feel out the sorts of arguments that you will run into, in order to get a feel for
your audience. Then you can tailor your pitch for change—and it really is a sales pitch in
many ways—to your organization.
There are several possible strategies that you might use to “sell” your change to the people
in your organization, depending on the environment in which you are working. Here are
a few that have been effective in the past. There’s no single solution to any of the prob-
lems in the previous section, though—you will have to use your own judgement to figure

out an approach that will work with the people in your organization. With luck, you can
start to combat the poisonous attitudes in your organization that would stand in the way.
Of course, even after all of this, there’s no absolute guarantee that you will actually be
able to change your organization—but at least now you have a better shot.

“We’ve always done it like this”
Organizations uncomfortable with any kind of change are the hardest to deal with. In this
situation, it often makes sense to make it appear as though the change you are making
isn’t a change at all. Pitch the effort as preserving the status quo: “We’ve always built soft-
ware like this; now we’re just writing down the best practice so we apply it consistently.”

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