THE STARTING POINT
A practical guide to defining interface responsibilities, data exchanges and recovery paths.
Follow one exchange end to end.
Choose a representative exchange, such as an order moving from a website into an internal application. List the sending system, receiving system, fields and trigger. Decide which system owns each value. If two systems can update the same record, document how conflicting updates will be handled before building the interface.
Design for delayed and repeated messages.
An integration can receive the same request twice or lose a response after the receiver has completed its work. Discuss identifiers, retries and reconciliation with the implementation team. Define how users see a pending or failed exchange, and who can safely correct it without creating duplicate business records.
Make the interface reviewable.
Record examples of accepted and rejected inputs, expected responses and access requirements. Include a change process so that one system cannot silently break the other. Review the contract with both owners and test representative failures before considering the integration ready for operational use.
TAKE THE NEXT STEP
Your discovery checklist
- Name both system owners and the authoritative source for each field.
- Document duplicate-message handling and reconciliation.
- Review sample requests, responses and failure paths.