I generally refrain from pontificating. Unless the day ends in ‘-y’. Today happens to fall into that category. Being young and naive of failure brings its own special quirks into my daily routine; mostly having to do with fixing things. Things that make us go. This invariably involves changing the status quo; but unless you’re running on a campaign promise of change, people hate changing the status quo.
I can only assume speechwriters help. On a more constrained budget, we are left with proving that our change is necessary, proper, and that the i‘s are dotted just so.
Dealing with the devil is also an option.
If you’ve got a change you need to make happen (e.g., automating a manual process like deployment), there’s going to be, let us say, internal inertia against it. .
Options:
1. Do nothing.
2. Adapt, improvise, overcome. : If you can’t make change happen, you can at least try to modify your processes so that they aren’t affected by the roadblock. This requires that you aren’t ‘set in your ways’. I can hear the religious weep.
3. Make change happen. : Don’t wait for it to happen. Don’t wait for someone else to make it happen. Take it upon yourself to make it happen. How?
In a business, it call comes down to two things: 1) Costs. 2) Revenue. Lower the first, improve the second. Any change you make better do one of the two, preferably both. Need automated deployments and builds? That lowers cost (Developer time = money). Need Unit Tests? That also lowers costs and can potentially increase revenue.
So long as you think about your change in terms of Costs and Revenue, there’s no reason why you can’t get them enacted.