I find that understanding 'big company' politics is one of the most challenging ideas for developers to understand. One of the thing that Joe, the E.piphany sales guy could have done to head this off, would have been to immediately suggest an audience with the CIO the minute the VP of sales stated that her problems were ones that IT was working on but could was taking a long time to solve.
The politics of big companies can get really crazy and just like Steve, internal IT believes that 'not losing is as important as winning'. To IT, having a new company come in and solve a problem that they were spending months to solve would be the same is losing. The end result is that they are now perceived as not being a true partner to the business. They are just the people who plug in cables and who make sure the lights are on. For the AutoDesk IT department, this would be the same as losing.
Kudos to everyone for making this work if it solved AutoDesk's problems.
To everyone else, make sure to discover and get in front of all key stakeholders. Some of those stakeholders can be the person vacuuming the floor as you walk into the building.
The politics of big companies can get really crazy and just like Steve, internal IT believes that 'not losing is as important as winning'. To IT, having a new company come in and solve a problem that they were spending months to solve would be the same is losing. The end result is that they are now perceived as not being a true partner to the business. They are just the people who plug in cables and who make sure the lights are on. For the AutoDesk IT department, this would be the same as losing.
Kudos to everyone for making this work if it solved AutoDesk's problems.
To everyone else, make sure to discover and get in front of all key stakeholders. Some of those stakeholders can be the person vacuuming the floor as you walk into the building.