Lessons in Resilient Integration Design and Building Integrations That Break (Gracefully)
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Drawing from his experience at Accenture, FIS, Amazon, and now Chronograph, Shrijit broke down what most PMs miss when thinking about integrations and backend product strategy.
Visualizing the Lifecycle of Data
Many product managers focus on user journeys from a frontend perspective. But Shrijit urged backend PMs to apply the same lens to the flow of data.
"If you're a backend PM, think of it like frontend PMs look at user journeys. You need to learn to visualize the journey of data across your entire infrastructure."
He shared how this mental model helps PMs design for edge cases, understand breakpoints, and create better alignment across teams. Using frameworks like the Theory of Constraints or Value Stream Mapping to diagram how data moves through your systems can help uncover bottlenecks and failure points.
Why You Need Anti-Fragile Integrations
Inspired by Nassim Taleb's book Antifragile, Shrijit highlighted the importance of building systems that don’t just survive failure, but get stronger from it.
"It’s not just about preventing failure. It’s about how you handle failure when it inevitably happens."
In the world of integrations, external dependencies and versioning are often outside of your control. Designing for graceful failure (using things like circuit breakers, retry logic, and fallback strategies) can be the difference between a frustrating product and a scalable one.
His advice was to treat every integration as a living system. Build in resilience patterns that expect failure, not just prevent it.
Technical Fluency That Builds Credibility as a Product Manager
Shrijit shared that you don’t need to be an engineer to be a great technical PM. But you do need to be able to reason like one.
"You don’t need to know how to write stored procedures, but you should be able to whiteboard system flows and reason through architectural tradeoffs."
Ask yourself: Can I map out an API lifecycle with an engineer on a whiteboard? If not, brush up on the foundational concepts.
He recommended that Product Managers focus on mastering system-level concepts like the CAP theorem, messaging queues, consistent caching, and schema evolution. Shrijit also recommended the book Designing Data-Intensive Applications.
Standards Aren't Silver Bullets
When it comes to protocols like REST, GraphQL, or even newer ones like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for AI, Shrijit advised against being overly rigid.
"You have to adapt to the use case, not force a standard that leads to unnecessary tech debt."
He explained that standards are helpful, but they evolve. And sometimes, customizing your approach is necessary for long-term scalability. So, his advice was not to fall into the trap of over-engineering. Standards should enable flexibility, not restrict it.
How to Start an Integration Team from Scratch
At Chronograph, Shrijit was tasked with standing up their first integration and data infrastructure team. In this episode, he shared a practical, three-step playbook:
- Map where integration fits in the business value chain
- Extract tribal knowledge through documentation
- Earn trust with quick wins
"Don’t start with the big vision. Start with value. Quick wins give you the space to build trust and ask deeper questions."
He advised to use tools like Wardley Mapping, a strategic planning framework, to understand where your work fits in the business. Start small, and document as you go.
Customer Success as a Goldmine for Product Insight
Shrijit credits much of his roadmap validation to listening to customer success teams and support calls.
"In B2B, your customer success team is the voice of the customer. You can’t build great integrations without them."
He also suggested involving engineering in the discovery process. Letting them shadow support calls or attend customer conversations to build empathy and context. His advice to Product Managers was to create a structured process for surfacing insights from customer success, and making it part of their product discovery rituals.
Final Takeaway
The tech world is moving fast. Protocols evolve, systems break, and expectations rise. But the PMs who succeed are the ones who develop a systems mindset, think cross-functionally, and design for both scale and failure.
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This podcast is hosted by Pandium, the only embedded integration platform that facilitates faster code-first development of integrations, allowing B2B SaaS companies to launch integrations at scale without sacrificing customization and control.
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