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The (latest) CEO calls to "unify" (restructure - yet again) the company. That vague call results in the age-old purchase of a "technology" to solve the problem

The (latest) CEO calls to "unify" (restructure - yet again) the company. That vague call results in the age-old purchase of a "technology" to solve the problem from a vendor - MuleSoft. An "API" is the answer they are told they need - easy. Millions of dollars later after much time has past, the project is of course in trouble. The author is asked if he knows anything about APIs. He says sure, they're easy. Just expose the database through an API. How hard can it be. My prediction (guarantee) is that a lot more time and money will go down the drain before this API effort is finally abandoned. The issue is the chain of naive and poor decisions being made, which are exacerbated by the advice of the author.

Angostura 7y ago
> which are exacerbated by the advice of the author. Really? what advice is being given here that would exacerbate anything? From what I see, the author is carefully enumerating the problems which need to be carefully addressed before this kind of change can be made. He is deliberately holding up the 'You just need an API, how hard can it be?' perspective as a naive one and looking at why it isn't that simple. I found this an interesting and useful argument, particular the element about trust and loss of control
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  From experience working on these sorts of sites - No its not - how you structure a large world wide care hire site is a known thing now its not rocket science. In the past I have worked on one of the Big car hire sites and in my opinion Accenture and Hertz where just incompetent. Probably Non Culpable Incompetence for Hertz, Accenture not so much.
huffmsa 7y ago
Cases like these are either solved by giving someone absolute power to steer the project, resulting in squished toes and hurt feelings and potentially becoming a HBS postmortem, or accepting that it's going to take a while to reconcile all of the different fiefdoms. There seems to be a lack of translation to "what should actually be built." Management wants a unified API, but my first (and probably incorrect) idea would be to develop an ORM + set of functional libraries which can be implemented independently by each of the involved parties. That has its own risks, but getting everyone speaking the same language is a good place to start.

Angostura 7y ago

> which are exacerbated by the advice of the author. Really? what advice is being given here that would exacerbate anything? From what I see, the author is carefully enumerating the problems which need to be carefully addressed before this kind of change can be made. He is deliberately holding up the 'You just need an API, how hard can it be?' perspective as a naive one and looking at why it isn't that simple. I found this an interesting and useful argument, particular the element about trust and loss of control

C1sc0cat 7y ago
From experience working on these sorts of sites - No its not - how you structure a large world wide care hire site is a known thing now its not rocket science. In the past I have worked on one of the Big car hire sites and in my opinion Accenture and Hertz where just incompetent. Probably Non Culpable Incompetence for Hertz, Accenture not so much.

huffmsa 7y ago

Cases like these are either solved by giving someone absolute power to steer the project, resulting in squished toes and hurt feelings and potentially becoming a HBS postmortem, or accepting that it's going to take a while to reconcile all of the different fiefdoms. There seems to be a lack of translation to "what should actually be built." Management wants a unified API, but my first (and probably incorrect) idea would be to develop an ORM + set of functional libraries which can be implemented independently by each of the involved parties. That has its own risks, but getting everyone speaking the same language is a good place to start.