Due to the high number of stakeholders in integration projects, balancing conflicting interests and reaching conclusive decisions can take a long time.

Enterprise Integration TodayHow to ensure successful integration projects

Inspired by ZAFIR® – a Zühlke framework with best practices and resources for leading integration projects to success.© 2011 by Zühlke. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.www.zuehlke.com/integration

Which business needs do you address? Do you address all aspects of enterprise integration?

Do you involve all of your stakeholders?

Is your project aligned with your organisation and processes?Do your plans account for a higher level of coordination effort?

Do you have the right project process?

Do you plan and execute system integration tests early?

Do you move towards a harmonised enterprise architecture?

Does your integration platform fit your needs? Do you describe your interfaces systematically?

Do you have the right people on your team?Successful integration

Do you have management support?

Integration projects have a range of drivers satisfying various business needs: Enterprise Integration involves integrating teams of people as well as systems. This has a direct impact on business performance indicators like agility, value chain efficiency and the cost effectiveness of supporting processes.

A successful integration solution can only be developed by taking all these aspects into account. Use a systematic approach such as Zachman, TOGAF or ZAFIR® to address all relevant issues.

Think about business structures before system structures.

Integration projects need more coordination and communication outside the project team than projects concerned with a single differentiated system.

Examples of activities that take more time

Reaching consensus Resource allocation

Iterative processes reduce project risks. However, when multiple project teams are involved, it can be difficult to keep pace with continuous changes and short iteration cycles.

Balance agility and planning. Treat iterative and plan-driven approaches as complementary. Split up large projects into small, pragmatic steps. View the whole, engineer the part.

Enterprises benefit from modular and interchangeable

integration components. Vendors sell

integration suites. Both approaches

have advantages and disadvantages.

Planning system integration tests takes a lot of time due to: complex dependencies between systems schedules that conflict with other projects

Ask yourself: When are the systems feature complete and ready for test? When is the test infrastructure available and ready? When is consistent test data available in all systems?

This requires coordinated release and test management.

Before you decide, do a proof-of-concept based on your IT-Strategy and non-functional requirements.

The design of a system’s interfaces directly influences

it's architecture and the degree of coupling with other systems.

With an early specification of interfaces you can avoid

expensive changes late in the project.

Uncontrolled growth of application landscapes often leads to high level of change effort and high maintenance costs. A well defined enterprise architecture will pay off due to greater flexibility in developing business solutions and reduced costs.

There are a lot of stakeholders in integration projects. These projects change existing organisational structures, processes and systems, and the way people using and operating them interact.

Identify stakeholders systematicallyDepending on the level of integration and drivers of your integration project, different categories of stakeholders may be affected.

Consider indirectly affected stakeholders beyond your project’s scope or direct context.

Successful enterprise integration ultimately depends on how well the people - and the IT systems

supporting them − work together, in other words, how well they are “integrated”.

In our understanding, there are two main perspectives on an enterprise integration project:

Externalise hidden topics by performing a systematic analysis.

Use the results to: Show benefits of the project Create a target group oriented

communication strategy Plan team development

In addition to the “usual” setup of an IT project team, in integration projects there are special roles that should be represented:

Typically, you do not have control over the long-term availability of your team members.

Derive interfaces from a high-level business process model. Organisational distance should drive

the degree of decoupling. Review all interface specifications

with the corresponding users Codify interface standards,

for example using checklists.

Only projects recognising business needs have business support. Ignoring this may lead to the loss of business support for all IT issues.

Efficiency, Costs

Turnover,Time-to-market

Overall costs,Time-to-market

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Define a roadmap to move iteratively to a harmonised landscape. Each project should help to establish enterprise architecture standards.

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OK. I will!

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Implementing an ESB in an organisation that is not set up to deal with

federated responsibilities will ultimately lead

to failure.

The support of upper management is needed for: Solving resource conflicts Accelerating decisions Overcoming resistance Providing backing

Requirements analysis

Ensure the relevance of your integration project by systematically assessing and validating your

project’s motivations and goals in order toalign the project with the enterprise's

business needs, priorities and standards.

DriversMergers andacquisitions

BusinessInnovations

TechnicalInnovations

Needs

embrace change up-front planning

learn fromearlier stages

up-frontarchitecture design

prototyping in-depth analysis

ZAFIR®

Problem Space

Awareness

Care Needs

Change Structure

Enterprise Integration Roadmap

IntegrationProject

Resistance Matrix

Sceptic Promotor

Opponent Procrastinator

Business perspectiveProject that builds bridges across organisational or technical boundaries.

IT perspectiveProject that delivers an IT solution based mostly on existing rather than new functionality.

Practice change management Some of your stakeholders may have hidden factual or personal arguments against (or in favour of) your project.

Yes!

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Save time Vendor support

Generic nature causes accidental complexity Vendor lock-in

Standard integration suites

ProsC

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Flexibility Lean infrastructure

Countless choices Need sustained

governance

Modular components

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