Three and a half years stalled.
None of it for technical reasons.

The situation

The work was not missing. A single studio had been developing a Zero Trust architecture for about three and a half years and had produced something real. What it did not have was agreement — not from the other studios, and not from the parent company. Underneath that sat an identity organization in the middle of its own turmoil: several directors in quick succession, and directory structures across the studios with nothing tying them together. Zero Trust depends on identity, and identity was the least stable thing in the building.

Why it had not been solved

Because the objections were correct. When a studio said “we do not have the bandwidth to build this,” that was true, and no amount of executive sponsorship makes it less true. When someone asked “who is going to pay for this,” there was no good answer for as long as the question was being asked between peers — every studio had its own budget and none of them had a reason to fund something the others would also benefit from. Add the ordinary politics and pride of getting independent business units to agree on a large change, and a program can stay technically finished and organizationally dead for years.

What I did

Started where I start most engagements: where are we, where do we want to go, how do we get there. Then worked with the original architect to tighten what he had already built, rather than arriving with a replacement — the architecture was not the thing that was broken.

After that it was the objections, taken one at a time, and neither of the two that mattered was answered by persuading anybody. “Who pays” was relocated rather than argued: it went to Activision corporate, the parent entity, which should have owned it all along. Between peer studios that question has no answer; one level up it stops being a question. “We do not have the bandwidth” was accepted and then removed: my architects built it for the studios, so their cost of participation dropped to a switch. All you have to do is turn it on.

Identity ran in parallel rather than first. I used my own IAM background to fill the gaps while that organization was in turmoil, so the Zero Trust work was never waiting on somebody else’s reorganization to finish.

Result