Name the handoff before naming the technology
‘Connect our CRM to operations’ leaves too much undecided. A more useful starting point is: when an approved deal is marked won, create a project record for the delivery team using the agreed client and scope fields.
That statement identifies a trigger, a destination, and the people affected. It does not yet confirm that either tool exposes the necessary API or that the current subscription includes it.
Write down which system owns each field
A two-way integration is not just a connector running in both directions. If someone changes a deadline in the CRM while another person changes it in the project tool, a rule must decide which update wins.
- Client identity: use a stable record ID, not a display name that may change.
- Scope: decide whether the project receives a snapshot or future amendments.
- Owner: map users deliberately; do not assign the first account returned by the API.
- Dates: document time zones and the meaning of each date, such as delivery deadline versus next review.
Define what should happen when the handoff cannot finish
A successful example is only one part of the scope. APIs become unavailable, required fields are missing, and event providers may deliver the same event again.
A repeated event should be recognizable without treating a second project from the same customer as a duplicate. Store an event or submission reference, confirm the destination write, and expose unresolved outcomes to the responsible person.
- Missing information goes to review rather than receiving a guessed value.
- Retries reuse the original event identity.
- An uncertain response is reconciled before another write is attempted.
- An alert failure does not erase an already-created project.
Ask for acceptance checks you can observe
The proposal should say how the agreed workflow will be demonstrated with synthetic data. One event creates the correct record; a repeated event does not create another; the wrong account cannot read it; and a failed connection is visible.
Also name the handover: access, documentation, who monitors failures, and what maintenance or third-party costs are outside the initial build. These details make a project quote more useful than a promise to ‘automate everything’.