There is process called Contextual Design. Part of it talks about treating the tacit knowledge of a workplace like a very necessary requirement for your software. So that means including the culture of the workplace in your reqs.
It sounds dumb at first but it makes perfect sense. What you did at that place was to apply a bandaid to a fracture where it really should have been a cast. But you didn't know it was a fracture because you didn't look past the swelling to the root cause of the pain. This is nothing new, consultants have been loathed for this very reason for a long time now.
That was me telling you how to do your job. If you wanna know more, google it. If ya got offended, have a nice day!
Personally, I see a very clear line between culture and politics. The people of the various departments didn't have any conflicts. It was strictly between department-heads.
And, for what it's worth, the C-level types loved the project too. What I did was replace a wooden peg with a modern prosthetic and upset the guy who was selling wood oil for conditioning the peg and the guy who sold the leather straps [1].
edit: That said, sure, it'd have been less stressful if I worked in the politics up-front. I said as much. But I've done it that way enough to know it would inevitably have compromised the system. And my post was a response to "why aren't the systems better?".
[1] and him, only because he couldn't see past the loss of the peg-strap business to see the gain of business making, maintaining and adjusting straps for the modern prosthetic.
Seems to me the C-level execs should have given you more cover. It's their job to manage their organization, not yours. This strikes me as a failure of leadership on their part.
Sure. But have you ever found a large company that paid any of their bills on time? Particularly after they have the deliverable, their incentive is very much to allow their middle managers to continue inventing 'concerns' and delay payment.
Everything was couched in "We're really happy. We're not sure why Bob isn't. But we'd really like you work with him to sort that out."
You are right, there IS a line between culture and politics.
But thats the thing. You should count politics as part of your requirements too, or thats what the theory states anyway.
For example, lets say you digitized an inventory form for a sales dept of a plastic company. By doing this, you effectively removed use of a pen from the 'system'. Now what politics could you possibly be affecting by eliminating use of a pen? Well, you could cause an uproar between the finance dept and the sales dept. Finance says that the organization's major stock holder is a pen company and the sales department must use pens (for whatever reason...lets pick advertising and promotion).
Now your system made the world efficient but it failed to account the current work practices of your client. You, sir, just screwed up.
Sounds a bit like the guy who had some really good advice to give, but didn't take into account the politics and context of the forum he was posting to, tagged it with a douchey comment at the end, and got downvoted and ignored.
I agree with the sentiment, but how can you know to trust someone's advice if they're acting in a way that's obviously very socially stupid? (I'm not huge on excessive politeness, but I think it's quite stupid to be aggressive for no reason. What purpose does that serve? Why should I trust the advice of a person that acts that way?)
It feeds into teaching me about people...I'm currently trying figure out how to work with really smart people and how to build and sustain high performance teams.
It sounds dumb at first but it makes perfect sense. What you did at that place was to apply a bandaid to a fracture where it really should have been a cast. But you didn't know it was a fracture because you didn't look past the swelling to the root cause of the pain. This is nothing new, consultants have been loathed for this very reason for a long time now.
That was me telling you how to do your job. If you wanna know more, google it. If ya got offended, have a nice day!