KISS - Keep Integrations Simple Stupid

I am seeing a trend...but not dead people. That would be bad.

The client first starts off by telling me that the system is very unstable and  users are frustrated and the support team is over worked trying to keep the engine running on a daily basis. Then, they show me a system architecture like the one that, John Schmidt produced to illustrate the accurately termed phenomenon of spaghetti integrations. This article describes how I go about removing the spaghetti strands in order to produce a more stable application ecosystem.

The 3 factors that lead to spaghetti integration

In my experience, the following three items significantly contribute to integration complexity (spaghetti):

1) The owner of the target system does not want to give any power to the owner of the source system. Therefore, they request all information to be sent to the target system so that they can do the work.

2) Weak organizational management or project stakeholders allow the process owner who uses the target application to have their way. This is generally because no one has the ability or political will power to prove this person wrong.

3) The system integrator realizes that if they build 20,000 integrations for a client with an IT support staff of 5 people, they can start buying plants for their cubicle because they ain't going anywhere.

So quite often, I am pulled in to evaluate what is going on when a new leadership arrives and cannot figure out why the system is so unstable and whether there is anything that can be done.

Something can always be done. But a lot of times, the solution is technical and organizational. The technical is usually the easy part. Gaining acceptance by the user community to use a different system for their processes or leveraging the information already processed by another application requires work.

Case Study: Process owner of accounting wants all prices and volumes and trade details sent to the accounting system so that they can process the settlements and create invoices in the ERP system.

The problem is that the information is already in the commodity trading and risk management (CTRM) system. The CTRM houses all the price information (including calculations), trade details, actual volumes and is designed to value deals and create invoices. Why not send the resulting invoice/purchase statement records to the ERP?

People.

You need to convince to convince the "negative" stakeholder that the CTRM can handle the task; they can manage their processes in the CTRM and they will be comfortable doing so.

It doesn't matter if you feel comfortable with the CTRM. It matters that the client feels comfortable with the CTRM.

Getting users over the hump is not easy and requires time and patience and a methodology. You can drive a plow through them but you will get resistance further down the line.

1. Nail down the inputs and expected results that are currently being churned out by the competing system.
2. Produce the same results in the CTRM based on their inputs.
3. Demo the results to the client.
4. Request that the client duplicate the results as well so that they are comfortable that no magic took place

Another way to help speed up adoption is to have them help you model their scenario in the CTRM. For this reason, make sure the scenario is simple but represents a large enough proportion of their transactions.

Why a simple scenario?

Simple scenarios are easier to follow. Negative stakeholders tend to try to give you the toughest scenario they can find and then get lost in the details when you try to demo the solution.

This doesn't mean don't do the complex scenario but build up to it. Essentially, the first scenario should be about making sure everyone understands the basics. 

What is the end result?

The end result you should be aiming for is to have each software in the value chain manage the processes they are most suited to perform. You want to have all the applications integrated but integrated in a smart manner. Being smart means reducing the amount of data that is transmitted from one system to another.

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