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	Issue TOC Print full article Print this page Download as PDF E-Mail this URL Flame the author     In this article Introduction Getting Ready for the Big Date No Shining Examples A Whole New World Children's IT Makes Friends on the Floors 20/20 Hindsight Next Steps

Children's learned these lessons at the school of hard knocks:

• Before signing on for any large-scale business application integration, make sure the project has non-IT executive ownership--and know the execs' names.

• Crash the party: Force your way into meetings at the earliest possible stage; don't let businesspeople minimize IT's involvement.

• Pick a code-freeze date well before the go-live date and stick to it no matter what anyone says.

• Test, test, test. When it comes to ERP, fight for end-to-end transactional testing.

• Know your audience. Spend time plumbing the knowledge depths and skill sets of your integration partners. Don't let them make decisions outside their abilities.

• Size matters. Do proper due diligence before selecting and sizing your hardware environment; don't rely on the vendor to do it for you.

• Talk to your customers. Engage end users to ensure what's being built meets their needs. Don't let a vendor start any conversation with "It's been our experience ...."

• Love your DBA. Success or failure can hinge on how well your databases are tuned.

• Don't rely on the main project management team to cover everything. Build plans for every technology area--development, networks, systems, helpdesk.

• Don't underestimate the importance of report generation. You may end up tuning live systems just to get them to print a report.

• Train everybody, from end users to developers ... the earlier the better.

• When dedicating people to a large-scale project, be sure to back-fill to cover their responsibilities.

• Be prepared to fight those pesky but inevitable software bugs. Set a maintenance schedule for your development environment.