Question: I keep getting the runaround and can’t finish my doc.

Answer:
Congratulations, you’ve just experienced another wild goose chase! These are maddening when a deadline looms, and are side effect of accelerated ad-hoc development timelines, where people don’t have time to talk or really work things out in an integrated fashion.

If you can, treat it as a fun excursion where you learn far too much about the inner workings of other departments. Eventually, you’ll have to complete your document as best you can, even if it still sucks. This is highly stressful if you are a conscientious person.

Don’t feel too alone in this. It’s likely that a lot of other people in your organization go on a lot of these, it’s not just you. They don’t like it, either.