Internal politics will affect the design and development of any project. Universities, Large corporations, Small corporations, Large businesses, Small Businesses...  Eh, who are we kidding?  Unless you are working with a single stakeholder, politics are going to be an issue.

At Bluespark, we have years of experience working with the many variations of corporate politics and have developed some guidelines for avoiding the political landmines for every stage of the process. These guidelines have been successfully applied to many projects and are applicable to both internal teams and agencies.

Our three step playbook can be integrated into any development process to help you manage organizational politics and deliver a successful project:

1. Assess the lay of the land. Before you can deal with the politics, take the time to understand the culture of politics and understand the players involved.

2. Cultivate relationships. It’s not possible to build the site your client needs without the support of some key players. If you don’t have this support, the project will founder.

3. Implement a flexible and extensible solution. There are certain features that a site like this needs. We have an example build, along with some high level implementation details.