Title: Should human factor be taken into account when deciding on what process to use?
Tags: process;agile
Question: When you are deciding on what methodology or process to use for your project, should you take into account the human factors? If there is any resistance to things, do you go with the flow or force people to change?
For example, say you want to push for pair programming but the team members resist to working in that mode (or show dislikes), what would you do? Make them get used to it, try to convince them to do it or go with the flow and let them do what they like?

Here is the accepted answer: First try to reason, you may be wrong:
If you have resistance to certain things, you can usually give your points for why you think it's good, and hear their points for why they think it is bad, and come to some common grounds.
You should never force people into doing something against their will, but instead try to convince them based on your logical reasoning.  Many times you will see reasons from them that changes your point of view.
If your developer is too afraid to voice their opinion, then you should make them feel comfortable with giving their opinion.  If they are still reluctant, then you should consider new developers.
Foot in the door principle:
If you want to try some new concept that neither you nor they have experience in, say pair programming, then you can ask them to try it for 1-2 weeks and then you can sit together again after this trial period and assess the effectiveness.   I think most people will find it perfectly reasonable to try something new if they have no experience in it, if it is for the purpose of finding out the method's effectiveness, and if it is only for a trial period.
If after this trial period, the thing you were testing was successful, then your developer will be more open to the idea.
Don't change them, find someone who fits:
If you are 100% for some way of doing things, and your developer is 100% against it, and he won't try it and has no logical reason why, instead of trying to change him you're better off finding a developer that will fit into your way of doing things.
If they are 100% against what you want to change, you have to make a decision.  Is the developer themselves more important to you, or is the process that you want to change more important.
If you force someone into something they don't want to do, they will find a way to make your method fail.

Here is another answer: Adapting the Process
The key to developing a good process with your people lies in adapting the process to the amount of ceremony that you need or want.  We use the RUP where I work and one of the central goals of the RUP is to tailor the amount of ceremony in your process to fit your project and the personnel.
For instance, small projects require far less ceremony and tool support.  As well, people new to a process need time to adapt.  It's best not to flood them with information and let them adapt at their own pace.
Show Me the Money!
To get people to buy into a new process is to let them make a mistake (or present an example form the past) and then show them how the process could have helped prevent the mistake. Try and draw a direct line to show how the process will help them improve the way they work.
For instance: if people are resistant to automating builds and running tests automatically then the next time they release a fix for something that broke a piece of code that was already working use that opportunity to illustrate that an automated test would have caught the error before it got released, saving everyone time and money.
Automation
To ensure people can adapt to a process is to remove as much human intervention from them as you can.  Automate builds, tests, reporting as much as possible using information that is automatically captured.
How this helps support process is by removing the "nag" factor.  Many people resist new process because they figure it means more work for them to do or extra work that produces little result in the end.  By automating existing tasks and gathering data from them you get a lot of benefit without increasing any individual developers workload.
A classic example is continuous integration.  Continuous Integration tools like CruiseControl, TeamCity or Hudson can work with version control repositories to extract latest versions of source code, build that code, execute and archive test results and package stuff for deployment.  This requires no extra effort on the part of the developer but you get a lot of extra "process" in return.  You now know how good your source code is, you can distribute it easily and you can catch bugs earlier.

Here is another answer: The human factor is the most important one.
If you consider nothing else, consider the culture and proclivities of the group.
People who want a process to fail will succeed.  It's far easier to alter process than to alter people.
Comment for this answer: 'People who want a process to fail will succeed' - ROFL!

Here is another answer: Yes.  Your development process needs to be humane.  That said, there are better and worse development practices and you should strive to use the better practices.  The best methodologies understand both human strengths and weaknesses and have practices that promote the former and compensate for the latter.
For example, most agile processes put a high value on trusting developers to do the right thing -- to work hard and value quality.  They allow developers to have significant input into the process and into the product.  This takes advantage of the human quality of rising to expectations.   On the other hand, humans have trouble managing too much complexity at one time, so agile practices insist on breaking things down into manageable chunks.
On the other hand, we know that people don't like to do things that don't directly add value to their work.  Agile practices, recognizing the value of things like unit testing, insist on this however and require the developer to conform to it despite the initial reluctance.  Using TDD compensates for this somewhat by giving real value to developing tests -- you do them first and let them guide the design.   It's a bit of the carrot and stick approach to get developers over the initial reluctance to the point where they can experience the value of the method and buy into it on their own.

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