Exactly, use the politics to your advantage! Depending on who you're talking to, you have to have a different raison d'etre. o Talking to HR: "We need to do X

Exactly, use the politics to your advantage! Depending on who you're talking to, you have to have a different raison d'etre. o Talking to HR: "We need to do X to reduce/increase headcount needs". o Talking to legal: "We need to do X to comply with Y regulation or decrease our exposure" o Talking to other teams: "We need to do X because our current system can't scale to take your load". o Talking to other teams that don't want to work with you: "We need to do X because your system can't scale and we're going to drop our dependency on you". o Talking to the business: "We need to do X to save $$$ this year" But if you simply say "We need to do X because of [highly technical reason]" then no one outside of your team is going to care or help you.