Love that XKCD comic…. was painfully familiar with that situation when I was working in the translation space with Clay Tablet – talk about a standards happy industry.  

The fact that this always happens indicates that there’s a systemic meta problem happening – that SMEs maybe shouldn’t be tasked with solving problems (directly) or having the power to declare a problem solved. Rather, they should be a resource used in the creation of the solution and — beyond the points you mention above — the ability to make the declaration of “the problem is solved” actually should involve at the end of the process, umm, the problem being solved — including no dread feelings.

The core of my job is to navigate between the worlds of corporate IT teams and the business objectives we’d like to meet with our clients. I really like the shared vision part, the way I approach that is to try and get both the client IT team and our development team to be part of the creative process. By doing that, they also have ownership and are more emotionally invested in making it happen.

I also invest a lot of time in building personal relationships with IT teams. Getting to know them as individuals and learning about their passions. That has helped me tremendously in getting through perceived constraints.

Great post, thank you bro.