Ricky & Stick - Interoperation Doesn't Just Happen
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When multiple parts have to work together -- anything from twine and birdcages to collections of complex information systems -- and those parts are constructed independently, then there isn't a prayer of succeeding without rigorous and careful planning about how everything is supposed to fit together.
Just about everybody has a favorite story about the pitfalls of poor integration planning. And yet, over and over, during decades of software acquisition, project after project has made the same mistake. It is still being repeated today. With awful regularity, we see some group of people get together and someone says, "Hey! Let's build a Big Integrated System! I'll build the frammis and you build the jimjam. We'll get Bob to build a few claptraps!" But no one worries too much about the integration part of it. And, sooner or later, the integration turns out to be far more difficult than anyone had realized, and the twine breaks, the birdcage falls, the whole project smashes to the ground, and everyone else points fingers. Then, a few months later, a different group of enthusiastic, hopeful people gets together and someone says, "Hey! Let's go build a Really Big Integrated System..." and so forth.
And that's the moment of truth, when somebody (perhaps you, Gentle Reader) has to pipe up and say, "Hey, let's stop for a minute! Let's see if the plans for the frammis and the plans for the jimjam are consistent with each other. And let's be sure that Bob's claptraps will fit -- or some comparable bit of caution. Because if somebody doesn't say something to that effect, and if that caution isn't shared by everyone in the room throughout the whole life of the project, then it's a virtual certainty that lots of people will work very hard for a while, but the frammis and the jimjam won't be compatible, and the claptraps won't fit at all. And, sooner or later, everyone will fall out of the tree yet one more time.
Bottom line: Interoperability doesn't happen just because you want it to. It takes effort and resources to make systems successfully interoperate in a useful way. So whenever someone asserts that "our systems will talk to each other..." or something like that, you might ask, "How much are we each budgeting for the interoperability aspect? Let's see that plan for how each of us will ensure we're keeping our side of the agreement. Hey, now that I think of it, let's see the agreement!" You might just find that the "agreement" is nothing more than a vague hope for a miracle.
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