Adoption & Evolution · master area
Resistance Handling
Resistance is not opposition. It is the team's honest signal about where the chain is asking for something the conditions don't yet support. Each form has a real concern underneath that deserves a real answer.
Owners: PO, Leadership, Tech Lead Phase it lives in: After We Build (Volume V) The corpus principle this enacts: Resistance handled well produces a smaller, more honest version of the practice. Resistance ignored produces silence and ceremony.
Where it lives in the chain
The five common shapes
| What it sounds like | The real concern | The real answer |
|---|---|---|
| "We don't have time for discovery." | Delivery schedule is tight; observation feels like overhead. | Discovery skipped doesn't reduce cost — it transfers it to rework at 3–5× the price. Run one cycle with discovery and one without. Compare the rework. |
| "The brief is too much process." | Team has been burned by process that added overhead without value. | The brief is not process. It is the document that tells you whether the thing you're building is the right thing. If it feels like overhead, shorten it. |
| "We already know the problem." | Team has domain expertise; observation feels redundant. | The Kelev example. A team that knew veterinary software built the wrong booking system because they never watched a receptionist work. Expertise is not observation. Both are needed. |
| "Predictions are guessing." | Being held accountable for a wrong guess feels punitive. | A wrong prediction is the most valuable outcome. It tells you exactly where the model needs updating. A prediction not checked is the only one with no value. |
| "We're too small for all this." | Team has heard the corpus as a checklist, not a sequence. | The corpus does not require all of it. See Minimum Viable Chain. Twenty minutes, two practices. |
How to do this
Listen for the real concern, not the words. A team that says "discovery is overhead" is usually saying "I've been measured on velocity, not on shipping the right thing." The fix is not to defend discovery — it is to measure something the discovery cost can be paid out of. That is a leadership conversation, not a process conversation.
Resistance ignored becomes silent compliance: the team performs the practice without believing it, the artefacts get filled out, and the chain produces ceremony instead of learning. That is more expensive than the resistance.
Related crafts
- Chain Maturity Assessment — where the team is on the journey
- Practice Sequencing — what to ask of the team next