Step 1: Understand the Enterprise and Problem Domain

Sounds simple, huh? Too bad this is the most complex and time-consuming part of the entire process. However, it is unavoidable. At some point, the problem domain must be studied, both freestanding and in the context of the enterprise. Understanding the problem domain requires working with many organization heads to get a handle on the structure and content of the various information systems, as well as the business requirements of each organization how they do business, what's important, and, perhaps more importantly, what's not.

This process is a basic requirements-gathering problem. It requires interfacing with paper, people, and systems to determine the information that will allow the application integration problem to be defined correctly so that it can be analyzed, modeled, and refined. Only then can the appropriate solution set be employed.

The quality of the information gathering at this step leads directly to and impacts the success of steps 2 and 3.