There was a post on the Scrum yahoogroup if folks encountered resistance from the company and how they got around it.

This is a common theme - here is my experience from my first Agile project:

Let me see if I can quote the developers that are now on the team from back then:

  • “Hell NO!  I will never do pairing, or work in a fishbowl, and that TDD stuff is all crap!  I like my office!  Go away!”
  • “Mitch – seriously, you’re on crack if you think I’m going to do this”
  • “Insert any string of expletives here”

That was in January of 2005.  These same folks now say to me:

  • “Thank you for pushing this”
  • “We are writing the best code I have ever seen come out of our group”
  • And my favorite: “I will never go back to the old ways, the ways of the dark side”

Change is as hard as people make it.  One way to soften the blow is by taking baby steps.  Introduce the team slowly. 

It took me 3 months to go from the first serious of quotes to get everyone in a room to start working.  We initially agreed on the following set of principles to follow:

  • Follow scrum by the book for 2mo
  • Do TDD to the best of our ability and allow time for us to learn (e.g. read more books, talk to experts)
  • Work in a shared workspace
  • Do paired programming

As a change agent, you are asking people to go from what they know – what has been successful for them in the past, to going to something they don’t know, something unknown.  Make sure that in taking this risk and jumping on the boat to try this out that they come into it with an open mind.  Get management support of not penalizing the risk takers (one of my biggest hurdles in the change), instead reward them for taking risk, even if they (the team) fail.

Most of all, have fun.