I've been doing some consulting recently helping out a customer who are having a crack at their first BizTalk project. They've got a talented development team but no previous BizTalk experience so we're trying to ensure that not only do we achieve or immediate goals but also establish sustainable development practices which will keep their guys productive (and sane) in the years to come.

The slick demos and marketing spiel may have you believe that everything is easy with BizTalk – just drag this here, drop it there and you've got all your LOB systems integrated! The reality is that integration is not easy. It takes a while to figure the best ways of doing things; and in an environment where you’re wiring up disparate systems, you can be forced to live with your mistakes for a long time! You can’t just refactor/rename a schema you’ve published as a service and it usually doesn't go down to well if you ask the "other guys" to change their tested and currently working code because you finally figured out the right way to build that orchestration you deployed to production three months ago.

The intention of this series of blog posts is to share some of the lessons learned from the BizTalk projects I've been involved with over the years and hopefully save some of you out there some pain.