Politics Wins over Technical
You've provided documented best practices and industry standards, along with experiences of successful and non-successful implementations to the project team and management. But because some business area needs to get 'something' completed FAST, your IT management buckles under political pressure and determins following best practices and established standards would be 'too anal.' The business areas could care less about support and maintenance costs or continuing to throw hardware at a bad design or multiple programming issues as long as the presentation layer looks good and they are able to get it in front of whatever senior executive they're looking to impress -- that is until slow performance or down time hits, then it is an IT issue.
It's exasperating to try to do the right thing for your project, department and company only to be shot-down by the very people who should understand the value of not using bubble gum and duck tape as building materials. This becomes an even greater sticking point when what brought you to the company to begin with was the company's public repetuation for being world class and the repetition of mission statement during the multiple interviews which included phrases like "standards of excellence, best practices, etc.
