In Part 1, we explored why integrations often get blamed for failures they didn’t cause.
In Part 2, we saw how capacity, latency, and volume issues surface as so-called integration bugs.
In this final article, we’ll look at another major source of recurring integration issues, one that’s often misunderstood:
Undefined requirements and missing governance.
When integrations start rejecting requests or behaving “unexpectedly,” the root cause is often not technical at all.
The Pattern: “This Should Just Work”
At some point, a new request appears:
- A new data field
- A new event
- A new use case
- A new consumer
From the requester’s perspective, it feels small. From the integration’s perspective, it may violate existing contracts, assumptions, or workflows.
When the integration enforces those rules, the response is often:
“This is a bug.”
But in many cases, nothing is broken.
APIs Are Contracts, Not Suggestions
Integrations and APIs are built around explicit contracts:
- What data is required
- What data is optional
- What behaviors are supported
- What responses are guaranteed
When a request falls outside those boundaries, rejection is the correct behavior.
The real issue is not that the integration failed; it’s that the contract was never updated to reflect new expectations.
Why This Gets Framed as an Integration Problem
These situations often turn into integration tickets because:
- The integration layer is enforcing rules
- The failure is visible there
- No intake process exists for change
Without governance, every new request looks like an exception and exceptions get mislabeled as defects.
Requirements Don’t Disappear — They Just Show Up Later
When requirements aren’t gathered upfront, they don’t vanish. They reappear as:
- Failed requests
- Unexpected payloads
- Edge cases
- “Can you just handle this one more thing?”
At that point, the integration team is forced into reactive mode, asked to adapt in production without clarity, approval, or design intent.
That’s not agility, it’s unmanaged risk.
The Cost of “Just Handle It”
When integrations quietly accept out-of-scope behavior:
- Logic becomes conditional and fragile
- Versioning is bypassed
- Backward compatibility is broken
- Technical debt accumulates invisibly
Over time, integrations become harder to change, harder to test, and harder to trust all because governance was skipped in the name of speed.
What Governance Really Means (And What It Doesn’t)
Governance doesn’t mean heavy process or bureaucracy.
At its core, it means:
- Clear ownership of APIs and integrations
- A simple intake process for changes
- Agreement on contracts and versioning
- Shared understanding of impact
Good governance enables speed by making change intentional, not accidental.
A Better Way to Frame These “Bugs”
Instead of asking:
“Why did the integration reject this?”
Ask:
“Was this behavior ever agreed to?”
If the answer is no, you’re not looking at a bug; you’re looking at a missing decision.
How This Completes the Picture
Across all three articles, a pattern emerges:
| Symptom | Root Cause |
|---|---|
| Integration failures | System design and expectations |
| Timeouts and retries | Capacity and latency limits |
| Rejected requests | Undefined requirements |
| Repeated defects | Missing ownership and governance |
Integrations don’t create these problems; they expose them.
Final Thought
When everything is treated as an integration bug:
- Systems never scale properly
- Requirements stay vague
- Architecture degrades quietly
But when teams step back and look end-to-end, integrations stop being scapegoats — and start being signals.
Signals that the system is asking for a better design, clearer ownership, or a different approach.
📌 Series Wrap-Up
If integrations keep getting blamed, the real issue may lie elsewhere.
A short end-to-end review can reveal whether you’re dealing with:
- Capacity constraints
- Architectural mismatches
- Or missing governance
👉 Schedule a free integration and architecture review to identify root causes — not just symptoms.