If you work for a big company chances are that the organisations structure is quite big complicated with many divisions some of which might be independent companies themselves. With many people in different positions with different goals comes politics.

Building architectures for such corporations has to follow.

Building architectures seems to be a purely technological task. You try to build the ideal hard- and software setup to support your business goals.

But what if the ideal setup affects other divisions with different goals than you?

Of course it makes sense to talk and to try to convince the other division that your proposed setup is ideal. But if they will accept your proposal and indeed help you implementing it must be doubted.

A different division means a different budget, a different team, a different list of projects to do, different priorities.

Any work to done there to realize your architecture affects those.

The effect this will have to your architecture must be obvious. You can no longer plan with the complimentary part in that other divisions domain as their resources and budget simply isn’t yours.

Also chances are that your architecture proposal ideally supports your goals but may corrupt the goals of the other division. I have witnessed several times that an overall sensible architectural idea would have implied the move of responsibilities from one division to another. The loss of  responsibility is something that will not happen voluntarily as it affects personal careers.

So how to do it?

You have two possible ways to go.

1. Pass on your proposal up to the next hierarchy level that has authority over all affected divisions.

If that isn’t successful.

2. Redraw your proposal to not affect other divisions. All consequences like complicated workflows or unnecessary redundancies have to be accepted.

cor · politics

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