AlbeesOnline has posted a great article showing how difficult integration projects can be when you need to work with teams spread across an organization. A relatively straightforward project turns into a Frankenstein of text files and workarounds. It also shows the reason why projects have meetings that involve 20-30 people five times a week, you miss a department and they’ll pop up out of nowhere and tell you what you are doing is impossible.

I have to admit that I die a little inside when I hear of projects that have to switch from clean-elegant solutions to crazily complicated ones to work around corporate policies. The customer gets the final solution and wonders why the heck they bothered with an integration platform in the first place. It’s depressing.