Changing Software Development: Learning to Become Agile

9.5. Remove Barriers

One of the reasons why change fails to happen is simply that there's some barrier that stops it. We have already discussed barriers to learning and motivational blocks (Chapters 5 and 8, respectively). Many of these barriers are the same ones that stop change from happening. Therefore, it follows that if we remove barriers to change, then change will happen.

Some of the actions already covered in this chapter are aimed at removing blocks to individual change. By providing time and space, and by empowering people and resolving conflict, barriers that prevent change are removed.

Other blocks may be organizational; for example, research and development teams that don't communicate with the production group. Or they may be financial, such as budgets that don't allow books to be bought. These barriers can be more difficult to remove, because they do require authority and the involvement of managers.

The hardest blocks to remove are those that we don't see. Before you can remove a barrier you need to see it, and before you can see it you have to be looking for it. Many of these problems only exist inside our own heads or in the accepted practices of our teams and organization. Therefore we need to learn to recognize blocks that stop us from changing. Over time, as we learn to recognize the barriers and become practised at removing them, then it will become easier.