I still frequently run into IT professionals who have difficulty articulating a definition of integration.  Maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised.  It wasn’t that many years ago that I stumbled to respond to the question from my kids “what do you do at work dad?”  My knee-jerk reaction was to say that I go to meetings. If you still struggle with describing your integration role, the following suggestions may help.

Integration can in fact be a somewhat vague and eclectic collection of activities that is hard to explain in a concise fashion to non-professionals. I was returning to the U.S. recently after a trip abroad and faced a similar question when the US Customs Officer asked for my profession. Should I say “Consultant” just to keep it simple or should I use IT Professional, Systems Integrator, or should I use my job title?

So here are three suggestions for how to answer the question “what do you do?”  The key is to size up your audience and use the appropriate response that they are most likely to understand.

If the question comes from a Customs Officer or you are filling a form with limited space for a job or profession, I suggest you simply use Systems Integration to avoid any lengthy discussions.  The answer is short and sweet and includes the operative term.  Even if you work in a specialized area like data integration, business intelligence, or integration competency center, Systems Integration is a widely understood role.

If the question comes from a non-IT professional, and if they are asking the question because they are truly trying to understand, you might say that you “facilitate communications and alignment of data between different computer systems.”  Or you could use an example.  My favorite one is to ask a question in return; “if you have 10 accounts at the same bank (checking, savings, credit card, mortgage, investment, line of credit, etc.) and you call to change your address – how many places do you think the bank will have to update your address?”  It’s a somewhat rhetorical question (although I’ve seen cases where the answer is 20 or more).  In any event, an example usually works to make the integration job more tangible for non-IT professionals.

If the question comes from an IT professional, you could offer a more comprehensive definition.  Something like “I am an integration specialist.  Just like Software Engineering and Enterprise Architecture are specialized IT disciplines based on a rich body of knowledge, integration is a relatively new discipline with a growing body of knowledge.  In a nutshell, integration is the discipline of combining data from independently developed components, which may be based on incompatible technologies and remain independently managed, and make them work together seamlessly.”

If any readers of this blog have some additional examples of how you describe your integration role, I would love to hear from you.  Just reply to this blog posting.