Integrations Are Messy
A talk and a set of visuals on why every integration is harder than the demo: the layers between two products, and everything it takes to get to one endpoint.
The phrase started as a way to end arguments. Partnerships wants the integration launched by the co-marketing date; sales wants it because a deal depends on it; engineering wants to know why a “simple sync” needs error handling, data modeling, authentication in both directions, a run location, documentation, and metrics. All of them are right, and none of them are looking at the same thing.
The talk walks through that gap. First the ring: eight teams that each hold a piece of an integration and each describe it differently. Then the stack: the layers between one company’s application and another’s, and the list of things that have to exist before a single endpoint is safe to ship. The point is not that integrations are hard. It is that they are messy in a specific, nameable way, and once the mess has names the teams can divide it up.
The business case guide and the integration questionnaire are the tools that came out of it.
Every team that touches an integration, in a ring around the company. None of them see the same integration.
Everything it takes to get to one endpoint. The slide people photographed.