Integration Projects

From Mnjiwiki

This page provides an introduction to help start a Business Integration project or set of projects.

Contents 1 Integration Solutions 2 Approach 3 Planning 4 Expectations

Integration Solutions

All integration solutions require one or more providers of information/services and one or more consumers. The information shared between provider and consumer must be available in a timely fashion and in a context understood and usable by each consumer. In some situations consumers will want to be notified of a business event. Other situations will require that consumers be able to make a request for information as needed.

The interaction with a consumer can be accomplished through a system such as a portal that serves as a single view into multiple applications. Another common solution is to present information/services through the primary operational system used by a consumer. Different organizations use different solutions to accomplish the same objective. There is no “one size fits all” solution.

Approach

Organizations need to establish an approach to Business Integration that complements their culture and leverages strengths. However, common characteristics should be shared by all Business Integration initiatives. These characteristics are:

• Plan for the big-picture with business process driving technical solutions.
• Establish an extendable service oriented integration framework so requirements not yet defined can be supported without extensive effort and expense.
• Leverage a common integration infrastructure to maximize reuse and minimize long term maintenance expenses.
• Deliver and implement incrementally to validate plans and minimize risk.
• Test early and often.

Planning

The following should be considered when planning any integration project.

• Integration efforts are inefficient from a scheduling perspective due to the many dependencies and different resource groups involved.
• When the initial coding of a service or component is considered done, the work necessary to use the functionality in production is approximately half complete.
• Organize the overall project or program into a series of related sub-projects...development of a service is one sub-project and consuming the service would be another sub-project.
• When implementing a new business application, integration generally represents approximately 40% of the overall cost of a project.

Expectations

• First and foremost, Business Managers need to take ownership for their business processes. Business Processes should be documented and measured. Develop models that illustrate the flow of information and work processes. Metrics should be maintained that include costs, wait times and effort/time required to complete each step in a process. An effective model of a current business process will identify bottle-necks and costly operations that are candidates for redesign and/or technology enablers.
• Business Managers must actively participate in defining solutions that will help streamline their business processes. While Business Managers need to be an integral part of defining what needs to change and how it should function, they should leave the technical details to their IT Department/partners.
• Recognize that any technology solution is only as good as the weakest link in the business process. Good technical solutions can make a bad business process faster, but they rarely fix a flawed process.
• Integration is hard! Don’t expect dramatic results too quickly. Rapid results can be achieved, but are generally only a stepping stone to the long term solution. Incremental delivery is the most effective approach to integration.