Doing it sensibly without a platform team.
WHAT MATTERS MOST WITH LIMITED TIME
Consistent error handling Timeouts everywhere Idempotency where money is involved Monitoring of last success
WHY THOSE FOUR
They prevent the failures that are expensive and hard to recover from.
WHAT TO SKIP EARLY
An API gateway Generated client libraries in five languages Elaborate versioning
WHAT TO DO INSTEAD
Middleware in the application One documented interface Additive changes only
WHAT TO AUTOMATE FIRST
Documentation from the specification.
WHY
It is the thing that decays fastest by hand.
WHAT TO WRITE DOWN
The conventions: naming, errors, pagination, authentication.
WHY
It keeps a small team consistent without review overhead.
WHAT TO BUILD ONCE AND REUSE
An HTTP client with retries, timeouts and logging.
WHY
Every integration then inherits correct behaviour.
WHAT TO MONITOR WITH MINIMAL EFFORT
Error rate Last successful run per integration
WHAT TO REVIEW WEEKLY
Failures that did not resolve themselves.
WHAT TO AVOID
Integrations nobody owns Credentials in code Test systems reaching production
WHAT TO DOCUMENT PER INTEGRATION
One page: what, why, who, and how to fix it.
