Custom Integration Discovery Checklist

Integration projects become expensive when the team starts with endpoints instead of the business workflow. Discovery should explain what must happen, which system owns each fact, and what the business will do when the connection is delayed or wrong.

Write the workflow in business language first. Technical choices become easier when the desired outcome is concrete.

Define the outcome

Describe the repeated task the integration should improve, who performs it, how often it happens, and what a successful result looks like. Estimate the current time, error cost, delay, and customer impact.

List every system and owner

Document websites, CRMs, accounting tools, inventory systems, spreadsheets, email, payment tools, and internal applications. Assign an owner who can answer questions about access, data quality, and business rules.

The API integration checklist helps with technical questions after the workflow is clear.

Map data and authority

List objects, fields, identifiers, required values, formats, ownership, update direction, and conflict rules. Decide which system is authoritative for each important fact instead of allowing silent overwrites.

Define triggers and timing

Specify what starts the integration, whether updates are real time or scheduled, how duplicates are detected, and what happens when an event arrives twice or out of order.

Design failure behavior

Plan retries, queues, alerts, manual replay, partial success, error messages, and ownership. A failed record should be findable and actionable without editing production data by hand.

Cover access and security

Document credentials, scopes, secret storage, environments, logs, personal information, retention, vendor access, and revocation. Keep production access limited to what the workflow needs.

Agree on acceptance and support

Use real examples for normal, missing, duplicate, invalid, delayed, and revoked data. Define who approves the result, what monitoring is included, and who supports the integration after launch. The acceptance checklist provides a useful template.