1. People regularly reconcile systems by hand
Spreadsheets and manual comparisons are often compensating for missing identifiers, silent failures or unclear ownership. Record what people check and why—it describes the controls the integration should provide.
2. Retrying a message can create duplicate actions
Networks and dependencies fail. If a request cannot be retried safely, temporary faults can become duplicated orders, payments or records. Idempotency needs to be part of the contract and data design.
3. Failures are discovered by users or customers
Infrastructure monitoring may show that every component is running while transactions remain stuck. Operational monitoring should expose age, throughput, exceptions and business completion across the full path.
4. A small change requires coordinated releases
Tightly coupled interfaces force multiple teams to deploy together and increase the effect of apparently local changes. Versioned contracts, compatibility testing and clearer boundaries reduce that coordination risk.
5. Nobody can explain the data transformation
Field mappings and business rules hidden in code, database procedures or scheduled scripts create knowledge risk. Important transformations should be testable, documented and owned.
6. Credentials and permissions are difficult to rotate
Hard-coded secrets and shared service accounts turn routine security maintenance into a risky production change. Managed identity, central secret storage and least-privilege access make ownership clearer.
7. Support depends on one person
If only one developer understands how to diagnose and replay failures, the integration is not supportable. Dashboards, structured logs, runbooks and controlled recovery tools should reduce reliance on memory.
What an integration assessment should establish
Start with the integration that creates the most friction
A bounded assessment can map the real workflow and prioritise fixes before a replacement architecture is commissioned. Domville Tech provides Azure API and system integration assessment, remediation and delivery.