Integration Services

Integration services is probably the most squishy of squishy work. I think that everyone in IT would agree that it is an important component of any systems or applications development/maintenance program, but how can we know that the integrators are doing a good job? I have put some thought into it and I think that I have come up with at least a few tangible and objective (measurable) deliverables that will help to lend some visibility into this process.

When we need integration services we have at least two components. It could be more than that, but let's stay with two for the discussion. We must treat the integration work as a separate mini-project. We should still march through the design, testing and security review processes that we would on any other project. Thus I think a System/ Sub-system Specification should indicate the design. An Integration Test Plan should identify how we should test. A Test Results and Evaluation Report should identify the results of the execution of the test plan. And Finally we should receive an Interconnection Security Agreement that identifies what and how data is being shared. Hopefully with these concrete and measurable deliverables we can begin to make this squishy work more objective.