Integration project are
never simple and is always complex in terms of management, development and
entity integration. Support activity of such project is intricate. I am sharing
my experience as I was fortunate enough to work in both development as well as
support activity of an integration project. The views presented are primarily
for fresher who are gearing up for new challenges in IT industry. No technical
jargon, simply an useful tips from hand on experience at work.
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| Integration process : Source: Internet |
Few key areas of focus are
as follows:-
1. Functional Knowledge: - This
aspect is must not only for
integration projects but for all kind of projects. Technical knowledge of an IT engineer fetches project entry but
functional knowledge provides longevity in projects. One should use every
opportunity to gain more of functional knowledge about the domain of industry
they are carrying out projects. In context to integration projects this helps a
lot to single out the faulty system when in issue/error.
2. Core systems in integration: - Since
integration projects are combination of various systems. Being aware of other
systems at least in context to kind of data they receive/provides will be useful
to enable complete functioning of the project. You may be involve in one aspect
of the system but for its functioning complete grasp of other dependent systems
are required. It not only reduces the time of analysis but also spotting the
origin of an error.
3. Input and output data: - To
evaluate an integration support issues we should master input and output data. One
should be acquainted with complete flow of data i.e. what is fed as input
followed by its flow in various systems in between for data interaction to
final stage of data output. This common concept is widely missed by engineers
in support activity which led them to confusion during the major issues in
production. The fire-fight become difficult as support engineers tries to
escape from the initial analysis phase for obvious reason of the timing. There
are several tools available which has been integrated in project to help and
visualize the error which we should be aware off.
4. Key contacts of system owners: - The bit of successfully resolving issue also lies in the kind of
contacts list you have in place for a projects you are involved in. Issues can
be multi-layer in nature where to progress in your analysis you might need help
from your dependent system. So you should know whom to call or as a result of
your analysis you found that next level of analysis need to be carried out by
other core systems in project. So always update your points of contact in such
projects.
5. Asking right questions to yourself: - Whenever you are assigned task or problem/incident ticket remember
to ask some key questions to yourself such as which area this issue has
happened? What is kind of input and output is expected? How can your
responsible system would help or diagnose the issue? What should be the
starting point? Now all this questions will have answer within you only when
you have successfully completed step 1 to 4. People in IT industry who are no
way responsible in fixing the issue happen to ask smart questions so in order
to satisfy them all the above questions answer should be made available by you.
6. Patience: - Over and above your
programming and functional knowledge you have to have a quality of being
patience. I can tell from my experience that however good the project
management is and with the use of better tools such as trace tracking, error
management etc. along with use of software development/management life cycle
processes such as SCRUM, AGILE you are bound to be assign with incident ticket
which is not yours. As the person assign the ticket is someone from helpdesk
who does not necessarily bound by any of the above 5 steps. Patience why
because if you have to support 24X7 then you usually get call in midnight. The
responsibility does not end saying either you do not understand the incident or
it does not belong to your system area of access. You have to attend the call
as well as need to carry out necessary analysis to provide base to your both
above statement with valid reasoning.
7.
Leadership skills: - This
skill is essential as most of the time you need to take lead to bring all party
on table to explain and help in identifying faulty system. Leadership skill not
necessarily means that you need to be manager or above all I want to convey is
you should have courage to take incident head on and try to resolve although it
is not your system incident. This will really shine your personality in long
run. Though you manage one system but incident manager will always prefer your
point of view in other problems as well. That means you will occupy GO-TO man
place in project.
Guys if you are interested
to know more about IT soft skills please visit below sites. They are really
useful going forward.
Thank You!
Satender Kumar Mall
Twitter: satenderiiit
This is good Satender and would really help a newcommer in the field. A couple of more things, I would like to add in your list is 'Communication' along with the Functional knowledge, patience and leadership skills that you have mentioned. It is utmost important to keep people aware of what is happening, and what you are doing and what the plan would be. Stake holders are more put off by non-communicating developers as compared to the ones who try and resolve the issue on their own but donot communicate the plan andd status. Donot feel scared to ask for help, if you are not able to resolve any issue. Asking for help only shows that you ahve the will to find the way out.
ReplyDeleteReally Darpan: The topic is moving toward completion only by incorporating your view. Hope more reader will contribute and coming new IT engineers will benefits from the same. This is out way of giving something to our coming generation of IT.
DeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteOne major thing I implemented is isolate the issue and identifiy where is problem ( source, destination or middleware )
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