An Introduction to Important Concepts of Application Integration Project Management

Featured article by Calvin Paige, Independent Technology Author

The more apps that need to be integrated, the more complex the project will become. However, the basics more or less remain the same. Irrespective of whether the project is just about building data communication channels between two simple applications or integrating multiple, complex business apps into a single enterprise-grade system, the following discussion will shed some light on a few key points for better management of application integration projects.

Find the Right Project Management Software First

There is no shortage of project management tools these days, but you need to find the ones that are relevant to your particular project.

Purely from a project manager’s point of view, application integration management is not dissimilar to planning for and managing any other software project. The parameters might be different, but the step-by-step planning, scheduling, budgeting, collaborating, communicating, providing transparent progress view, etc. are all necessary features to ensure the success of the process at every juncture and as a whole.

Therefore, you need some of the same tools, but with added features that facilitate app integration projects in particular. Go through the extensive list and detailed guides on selecting the right project management tools on The Digital Project Manager to find tools which will be useful for the specific project at hand.

Ensuring the Right Type of Data Transport Formats

To be clear, this is actually a very basic part of the process, but it also happens to be a place where plenty of errors are made. Primarily, CSV, XML, REST, XML-RPC and SOAP are the main formats used while building data communications channels, each of which is meant to be used with a different type of data, so it’s best to always check and recheck the formatting first if an error is indeed detected.

In rare instances when the opportunity is there, it might even be possible to transport the entire database seamlessly. If that is possible in the project which you are handling now, things just became a lot simpler.

The Architectural Principles Behind the Project Should be Sound

The architectural principles should be properly and clearly defined so that the technical team can plan and progress accordingly. The architecture of an application integration project is usually defined under the following main categories, based on which the step-by-step guidelines are then planned and implemented.

Business Orientation

Business-driven or business-oriented principles are the most dominant of them all for obvious reasons since the entire project is actually a technical solution to provide for the business’s specific requirements.

Layered Architecture to Facilitate Mapping with Incompatible Applications

Not all external applications are always able to use standardized interfaces, which will make it necessary for the team to add an extra mapping layer that bridges the communication gap between the standardized APIs and the incompatible app’s interface.

Independency of Each Application

The function of each application in the integrated system should not be affected due to the integration. Also, private/sensitive data should not be shared between the applications automatically.

There are, of course, various other considerations to be made here such as scalability, serviceability, and security mainly, but they are fairly standard in both definition and application. As for now, this should serve as a decent introduction to successful application integration project management.