Challenges in enterprise software integration: An industrial study using repertory grids

To identify and systematize software practitioners´ perceptions of a problem is an important first step toward analyzing and searching for a solution to the problem. This paper reports on an industrial study, in which the repertory grid technique was used to elicit practitioners´ perceptions of key challenges in the company´s software integration practices. The perceptions of a total of nine practitioners from three organizational groups (developer, QA manager, project manager) were elicited and analyzed. We found that perceptions differ markedly between groups, but that on some issues, there is a consensus across all groups. Three types of challenges were identified as critical, causes, and easy to handle, namely responsibility, requirements, and knowledge. The elicited information may be used to plan process improvement for integration projects in the company, and may also be used in building a general ontology for integration challenges and their solutions.