Identify the roles, responsibilities, and lifecycle of a integration project17% of the exam
Technical debt and why integration projects fail
Why integration projects stall and fail in MuleSoft's analysis: deadline-driven point-to-point shortcuts that become technical debt, siloed teams that rebuild the same integrations, and integration work that crowds out innovation, plus MuleSoft's three steps for reducing the debt.
Identify the common reasons that IT integration projects frequently fail.
~6 min read · 3 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Recognize technical debt from deadline-driven point-to-point shortcuts and explain why its cost appears on the next project.
- Identify siloed development and missing reuse as reasons integration work keeps repeating and slowing down.
- Explain how integration work consumes IT time and leaves applications unconnected, so new initiatives stall.
- Reject false causes such as too few applications or a team that is simply too small.
- Name MuleSoft's three steps for reducing technical debt in order.
Key terms:
- Technical debt: extra future work a team creates for itself by taking a shortcut that is not the best long-run approach.
- Point-to-point integration: custom-coding each connection as a one-to-one link between two systems.
- Siloed development: teams building in isolation, so each project integrates the same applications again.
- Reuse: building an asset once so other projects and teams can discover and use it.
Key facts
Technical debt definition
- Detail
- Shortcuts that create more work later because they are not the best long-run approach
Factors behind technical debt
- Detail
- Constrained resources, limited time, lack of incentive to focus on long-term impacts
Point-to-point outcome
- Detail
- On time and on budget now; technical debt, lack of security and brittle infrastructure later
IT time on running the business
- Detail
- Nearly two-thirds (63%)
Connected applications
- Detail
- Only 29% of the average organization's 1,000+ applications
Assets available to reuse
- Detail
- Just one third of internal IT software assets
Growing backlog
- Detail
- Not solved by adding more resources
- Which three factors does MuleSoft name as leading to technical debt?
- When the finance company replaces its legacy systems again three years later, why is the job easier with API-led connectivity?
- What share of internal IT software assets does MuleSoft report as available for developers to reuse?
- Why does MuleSoft pair API-led connectivity with a Center for Enablement when reducing technical debt?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
Keep reading with the MuleSoft Integration Foundations pack
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