The problem of delaying integrations

Different parts of the system done by different people in parallel that need to be integrated will have problems when the integration is happening because “the devil is in the details”.

One of the moments that usually delays software project is the integration of different parts done of the system.

Decisions

When we decide that a problem can be divided in two different tasks done by two different group of people in isolation, we are taking an architectural decision (Conway’s law).
That decision is based on the hypothesis that working in parallel will be beneficial (only true if those two tasks are unrelated), the total time to release the feature will be reduced.
But wait, have we considered the integration time and the integration problems that this architectural decision is producing?.
Is development time here the real bottleneck?.
The answer is usually no, integration time is usually underestimated, and the bottleneck itself.

Integration problems I have found could be summarized as:

• Parts don’t fit at all
• One of the parts done don’t honor the contract defined
• Parts fit the contract defined before developing, but the…