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Engineering Manager - Enterprise Integration Platform (alias ESB)

Engineering Manager - Enterprise Integration Platform (alias ESB)

Led a team of 1 to 7 developers managing 100+ data flows across 20+ business applications on Tibco BusinessWorks ESB for a 1,400-employee real estate group - capacity planning, Agile ceremonies, vendor negotiation, and ~370K EUR annual budget.

October 2023 - March 2024
~6 months
Engineering Manager - Enterprise Integration
Groupe Pichet
Tibco BusinessWorks 6SOFT MonitorELK StackMongoDB AtlasFTP/SFTPPGPGitLab CIPowerAppsJiraConfluenceMicrosoft Teams

Connected Systems

20+

Business applications interconnected

Production Flows

100+

Distinct technical data flows

Jira Tickets

932+

Jira ESB workspace tickets

SOFT Monitor Alerts

2,377

Monitored and processed

Presentation

Project definition and scope

The Enterprise Integration Platform (also known as ESB - Enterprise Service Bus) of Groupe Pichet was the central nervous system of the entire information system. Built on Tibco BusinessWorks 6, it orchestrated all data flows between 20+ business applications: accounting ERP, accounting software, treasury management, hotel PMS, real estate management software, CRM, PIM (Akeneo), DAM (Bynder), marketing automation (marketing platform), dematerialization platform, digital identity management (IGA), time tracking, HR system, fleet management software, and many others.

As Engineering Manager for Enterprise Integration, I led a team of 1 to 7 developers (internal staff and contractors from Square IT / RS2I). I created and facilitated all Agile ceremonies (Daily, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective), drove the ESB roadmap for 2022-2024, managed vendor relationships, and supervised all production flows.

This role required interaction with every department and business unit of Groupe Pichet (~1,400 employees), as each data flow represented a critical business process. I interacted with 80 people on a daily basis on entirely diverse subjects.

Business Domain

Real estate (new construction, investment, rental, hospitality, student residences, commercial) - Enterprise middleware integration

Impacted Users

All Groupe Pichet departments: Finance, Accounting, Treasury, HR, Marketing, Real Estate Promotion, Rental, Hospitality, Security, IT (~1,400 employees)

Integration Scope
Accounting (ERP & accounting software)
Treasury
Hospitality (PMS & channel manager)
Real estate management software
Identity & Access (IGA)
Marketing (Akeneo/Bynder)
HR (time tracking + HR system)
Dematerialization platform
Fleet management software
IS Ecosystem - Enterprise Interconnections

Overview of interconnected systems via the TIBCO BusinessWorks ESB platform at Groupe Pichet (1,400+ employees). Each flow represents a critical business process linking IT divisions to operational departments.

Connected Systems by Business Domain

Objectives, Context, Stakes & Risks

Strategic vision and constraints

Objectives
  • Drive the ESB roadmap 2022-2024 in collaboration with business units and IT leadership
  • Manage the middleware team (1 to 7 developers) with a complete Agile ritual
  • Guarantee availability of 100+ production flows (24/7 for accounting flows)
  • Integrate new flows requested by business units (hotel PMS, treasury software, financial software, dematerialization platform, HR system, internal business tool...)
  • Modernize infrastructure: evaluate iPaaS solutions (Middleway SAS, RS2I/TIBCO Cloud), implement CI/CD, replace SoftMonitor with ELK stack
Context

Groupe Pichet is a family-owned real estate group headquartered in Pessac (Bordeaux metropolitan area), with approximately 1,400 employees. Operating across new construction, investment, rental, hospitality, student residences, and commercial real estate, the group relied on a complex IT landscape with 20+ specialized applications that needed to communicate seamlessly.

The inherited ESB platform was the state of the art of the 2015-2020 decade; its modernization was identified as an axis of the IT transformation program (launched in 2022). A handover from the former ESB team lead allowed me to take over dozens of complex data flows. The monitoring system (SOFT Monitor) generated 2,377 notifications/month requiring systematic triage.

Business Stakes

Critical Business Impact

An ESB outage blocks accounting entries (ERP & accounting), student billing (PMS/treasury), CRM leads, pricing updates on websites, and identity management (IGA) - every flow failure has direct business impact

System Complexity

100+ distinct technical flows, each with its own transformation rules, execution schedules, and recipients. Cross-cutting dependencies between 12+ business departments

Regulatory Compliance

Financial flows (ERP & accounting software) are subject to strict accounting and regulatory constraints. Zero tolerance for data inconsistency in financial reporting

Identified Risks

Infrastructure Instability

Monolithic ESB architectures of this generation (state of the art of the 2015-2020 decade) had known constraints against the rise of the cloud. The IT transformation program had identified modernization as a strategic axis.

Knowledge Concentration

Critical ESB knowledge was concentrated in a single person (Jean-Francois). His departure required ~10 dedicated knowledge transfer sessions to avoid service disruption.

Alert Fatigue

With 2,377 SOFT Monitor alerts in the mailbox, there was a real risk of alert fatigue - critical failures buried among routine notifications.

Vendor Lock-in

Heavy dependency on Square IT for TMA (maintenance) and RS2I for TIBCO expertise. Contract negotiations and vendor management required constant attention.

Scope Growth & Team Ramp-Up

From 2 to 5 FTEs to absorb the rising demand

The 2023 roadmap exercise showed the true scope: 903 days of work estimated across the needs raised by 8 business IT teams, at a pace that kept accelerating (new flows for hotel PMS, treasury software, dematerialization platform, HR system...).

I led the team ramp-up from 2 to 5 FTEs to absorb this demand. We then brought in 2 additional external consultants on a time & materials basis to support us on more specific topics.

Every new flow was qualified by complexity, estimated in days and arbitrated against competing demands to stay aligned with current capacity.

2023 Demand Volume (working days/year)

903

days demand

→

2 → 5

FTEs (team ramp-up led)

+

full-time external consultants for ad-hoc reinforcement

Flow Costing Model

ComplexityDEV (incl. TMA)CP/PO (incl. UAT)Total consumed
Simple3d2d5d
Medium6d4d10d
Complex12d8d20d

Build vs Run Ratio

44% Build / 56% Run - showing the weight of operational maintenance on the integration perimeter

The Steps - What I Did

Chronological phases and personal contributions

Flow Coverage Over Time (cumulative active flows)
Phase 1
Progressive Onboarding
2019 - 2021
  • From the very first ESB alerts, I received and analyzed them after gaining a spot on the distribution lists
  • I requested and obtained admin access to the DEV1/DEV2/RECETTE environments
  • To centralize every integration ticket, I created the Jira ESB workspace
  • I launched the first COPROJ PIM/ESB meetings: planning, action plans, RACI matrices
  • On the upskilling side, I completed BW6 and Soft Monitor training with Square IT Services (Pierre A.)
  • On the Soft Monitor platform, I drove the version upgrade - cross-impact analysis and UAT
  • In parallel, I kicked off the Confluence ESB documentation: ERP flows, IGA flows, Soft Monitor access guides
Phase 2
Full Responsibility & Team Building
2022
  • I created the Daily Integration d'Entreprise (ESB) and I facilitated the daily standups
  • On the governance side, I set up the COPROJ Integration d'Entreprise and the Weekly SI Finance/RH/Transverse meetings
  • To cost ESB flows, I built the process end-to-end
  • To secure continuity, I led the full knowledge transfer from the departing ESB lead (~10 dedicated sessions)
  • On the strategic side, I conducted the iPaaS audit, evaluating Middleway SAS and RS2I/TIBCO Cloud
  • I ran the first Sprint Review: multi-project Sprint Backlog presentation, complexity grading, 2023 flow planning
Phase 3
Engineering Manager - Full Agile
Oct 2023 - Mar 2024
  • For the middleware team, I launched the full Agile ceremonies: Sprint Planning, Review, Retrospective
  • I drove the ESB roadmap 2023-2024 with business stakeholders and IT leadership
  • On the treasury migration (lots 1/2/3), I managed the flows from the accounting software to the new treasury software, including PGP decryption
  • I coordinated the critical ERP API migration: SOAP to REST - cross-impact on all financial flows
  • On new integrations, I supervised the HR system, the internal business tool and the IGA connector evolution
  • Finally, I drove a multi-project portfolio (ESB Enterprise Application Integration as the priority, alongside PIM, DAM, PSR and Ligneurs) and organized the structured handover in 10+ sessions before my departure
Multi-Team Requirements Collection

Collecting, qualifying, and prioritizing demands from 8 business teams

Requirements Pipeline

Flow Demands by Team (Retained vs Postponed)

Technical Documentation Produced

Complete documentation corpus following ITIL standards and Technical Direction requirements

DAA5 docs

Application Architecture Document

Interactions and data flows between the ESB and satellite applications (ERP, real estate management, hospitality legacy system, treasury software, HR portal, ANAPLAN). Exchange choreography, access permissions, flow trigger schedules, deployment prerequisites.

DAT1 doc

Technical Architecture Document

Complete inventory of physical system components: servers (hostnames, IPs, CPU, RAM, OS), network flows, ports and protocols, high availability, security and performance constraints per environment.

DAU1 doc

Automation Document

CI/CD pipeline management guide for ESB Eclipse projects: Azure DevOps configuration, YAML pipelines, Maven artifacts, Git branch management and environment variables.

DEX4 docs

Operations Document

Operational guide for the ESB platform: package deployment, configuration file management (properties, templates), TIBCO component troubleshooting (TEA, BW6, EMS) across 5 environments.

DFX13 docs

Flow Specification Document

Detailed integration flow specs by business domain: SOFTMONITOR, budget, accounting, hospitality, marketing (channel manager), real estate management, HR, transcoding, treasury. Includes SQL scripts and transcoding files.

DIN4 docs

Installation Document

Step-by-step installation procedures for TIBCO and Square IT Services on pre-production and production: hardware prerequisites (VM, vCPU, RAM), software (JDK, Visual C++), network config and rollback procedures.

DMI4 docs

Migration Document

ESB version upgrade procedures (BW 6.4 to 6.5.1, EMS 8.3 to 8.5): incompatible component removal, new version installation, configuration migration and post-migration verification with rollback plans.

SCHEMAS5 docs

Architecture Diagrams

Visio diagrams of ESB infrastructure per environment (production, pre-production, staging) and DevOps/CI-CD processes: Git workflows, Azure DevOps pipelines, TIBCO BW6 deployment.

ESB Roadmap 2022-2024

Major workstreams managed across 3 years

iPaaS Strategic Evaluation

A structured evaluation that did not reach execution

Evaluation Process

Key Figures

47 existing flows to migrate to the new platform. Estimated effort: 186 days (42 simple flows x 3 days + 5 complex flows x 12 days). The Enioka consulting study (51 pages) provided an independent assessment of the middleware landscape and migration options.

Two solutions were evaluated in depth: Middleway SAS (French iPaaS vendor, September 2022) and RS2I / TIBCO Cloud Integration (October 2022). Both showed promise but the migration scope - rebuilding 47 flows while maintaining production continuity - made the business case difficult to defend against competing budget priorities.

The iPaaS evaluation taught me that technical merit alone does not drive architectural decisions in large organizations. Budget cycles, competing priorities, and organizational inertia all weigh heavily. If I were to redo this, I would have quantified the cost of TIBCO instability incidents in direct business terms (downtime hours x revenue impact) earlier in the process to build a more compelling ROI case.

Actors & Interactions

How I collaborated with the team and the stakeholders

Team Organization
Middleware Team

I stepped into the middleware in 2021, and I saw the team fluctuate between 1 and 7 developers depending on project phases and contractor availability.

MemberStatusRole
Kalala M.InternalSenior ESB Developer
Issam J.ExternalSenior ESB Developer
Achraf L.ExternalESB Developer - joined Daily Nov 2023
Melissa B.InternalJunior ESB developer
Square IT / RS2IContractorsSeveral contractor developers on time & materials

Leading a mixed team (internal staff + contractors from different companies like Square IT) required careful coordination from me to preserve code quality, knowledge sharing and team cohesion. I set up pair reviews between internal and external developers to bridge knowledge gaps.

People Management Practices

Structured Onboarding

Achraf L. joined the Daily in November 2023 and was operational on critical flows within weeks. The onboarding included paired work sessions with senior team members, progressive access to environments (DEV -> PREPROD -> PROD), and a dedicated Confluence onboarding guide covering each flow family.

Cross-Company Pair Reviews

We set up systematic code reviews pairing internal developers with Square IT and RS2I contractors. This bridged knowledge gaps and prevented silos from forming along company boundaries. Each flow modification required review from at least one person outside the author's company.

Multi-Company Team Cohesion

A team spanning 3 companies (Groupe Pichet internal, Square IT, ...) required explicit working agreements: shared Jira board, common Git branching strategy, unified definition of done, and daily standups where company affiliation was irrelevant. Everyone, one team.

Mentoring & Growth

I accompanied junior and intermediate profiles on TIBCO BW integration patterns, helped them understand the business context behind each flow, and encouraged them to present their work during Sprint Reviews to build their confidence and visibility.

Team Evolution Over Time
Key stakeholders I interacted with

Claude D.

My N+1 (IT Project Director, PSI Pole): we validated budgets together, I presented the ESB roadmap to her, and she attended Sprint Reviews

Jean-Luc O.

My N+2 (Business IS Director): I aligned him on the strategic oversight of middleware investments

Jean-Francois (ESB Lead)

The former ESB lead whose role I took over - I orchestrated ~10 knowledge transfer sessions before his departure (Sep 2022)

Business Department Heads

I engaged daily with 12+ department heads (Finance, HR, Marketing, Real Estate...), each owning critical data flows

Square IT / RS2I / Middleway

I managed these external vendors - TMA, development, iPaaS consulting

IT Transformation Program Team

I collaborated with Emilie F., Cyril M., Sebastien B. and Bertrand D.

Agile Ceremonies Established
CeremonyFrequency
Daily Integration d'EntrepriseDaily
Weekly SI Finance / RH / TransverseWeekly
COPROJ Integration d'EntrepriseBi-monthly
Sprint PlanningPer sprint
Sprint ReviewPer sprint
Sprint RetrospectivePer sprint

Results - For Me, For the Company

Measurable outcomes and business impact

Operational Performance Indicators

DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) inspired metrics for the ESB platform (estimates based on project data)

< 2h

MTTR

Mean time to recovery for critical flow incidents

~2/month

Deploy Frequency

New flow deployments to production

~15%

Change Failure Rate

Percentage of deploys requiring hotfix

5-20 days

Lead Time

From business request to production deployment

Estimates based on Jira ticket analysis (932+ tickets) and SOFT Monitor alert patterns (2,377 alerts). Not measured with automated DORA tooling - derived from operational experience.

IT Transformation Workshop Details

Concrete Outputs

Each workshop produced a monitoring needs map per department: which flows are critical, what SLAs are expected, who should be alerted, and what recovery procedures exist. These maps fed directly into the IT transformation roadmap and influenced investment decisions for 2023-2024.

Teams Audited

Location (Rental)
Comptabilite (Accounting)
Hotellerie (Hospitality)
Parcours Client (Customer Journey)
Promotion (Real Estate)
Securite (Security)
Urbanisation (Architecture)
IT/Direction Technique
Budget Management & Vendor Negotiation

Flow Costing from Scratch

I built the first costing model for ESB flows. The inaugural estimate became the reference template for all subsequent flow estimates presented to business stakeholders and validated by IT leadership.

Purchase Orders & OPEX

35 purchase orders issued (Feb 2021 - May 2022) totaling 168K EUR documented spend. Monthly infrastructure OPEX: 18K EUR/month for Docker/Kubernetes hosting (216K EUR/year).

Contract Negotiation - Akeneo PIM

As manager, I negotiated a 3-year commitment at renewal to lock in the rate against a 30% price hike, backed by a cost-benefit analysis vs alternative PIM solutions.

For me - what this project changed in the way I work

Technical skills I gained through this project

  • Enterprise Integration Patterns: I gained hands-on experience with ETL, EAI, message routing and transformation
  • iPaaS evaluation: I compared Middleway SAS and TIBCO Cloud Integration through an in-depth cost-benefit analysis
  • Monitoring & observability: day in and day out, I operated SOFT Monitor, the ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) and MongoDB Atlas
  • CI/CD for middleware: I set up the GitLab CI pipeline for ESB flow deployment
  • Tibco BusinessWorks 6: I gained full mastery of ESB middleware configuration and troubleshooting

Domain & management skills strengthened through this project

  • Mixed-team engineering management: I led an internal + contractor team of 1 to 7 developers
  • Agile ceremonies: I facilitated the full set of Agile ceremonies in an enterprise context, adapted to middleware/integration specifics
  • Vendor management: I negotiated contracts with Square IT, RS2I, Middleway and Akeneo
  • Cross-departmental stakeholder management: I engaged daily with 80+ people across 12+ business departments
  • Knowledge transfer methodology: I built structured 10+ session programs for critical system handoffs
  • Budget management: I managed a ~370K EUR annual envelope for the integration perimeter. This project changed the way I work: I now bring portfolio vision, vendor negotiation and cross-functional communication from day one on any assignment.
For the Company - Business Impact

20+

Systems Connected

Business applications integrated

100+

Active Flows

Production data flows operating 24/7

932+

Tickets Resolved

Jira ESB space - incidents, evolutions, projects

~370K

Annual Budget (EUR)

Licenses + contractors + tools

Project Aftermath

What happened after my departure

Immediate Aftermath (March 2024)

My departure was preceded by a rigorous and structured knowledge transfer: 10+ dedicated sessions covering every perimeter I managed - the complete ESB landscape, PIM, DAM, PSR, Ligneurs. Each session was documented in Confluence with step-by-step guides, flow diagrams, and escalation procedures.

The team continued to operate with the Agile ceremonies I had established. Achraf L., who had joined the Daily in November 2023, was already onboarded on the key flows. Square IT contractors maintained the TMA (maintenance) contract.

Medium Term

The IT transformation program continued to address the infrastructure instability issues identified during my tenure. The iPaaS evaluations I initiated (Middleway SAS, RS2I/TIBCO Cloud) provided the groundwork for the modernization roadmap. The treasury migration I drove through Lots 1/2/3 was fully operational.

Today

The Groupe Pichet ESB platform remains critical infrastructure - the volume and complexity of data flows connecting 20+ applications make it irreplaceable in the short term. The architectural decisions made during my tenure (ELK monitoring, GitLab CI/CD, structured Jira workflows) continue to serve the team.

The question of iPaaS migration remains relevant: the instability concerns flagged during the IT transformation program in 2022 ("too much instability on TIBCO BW infra, new platform desired") represent a long-term strategic decision that will shape the group's integration architecture for years to come.

My Critical Perspective

How I judge this project with hindsight

What went well

  • Agile transformation of the middleware team

    With hindsight, the introduction of structured Agile ceremonies to a team that had none remains the most visible contribution: I brought visibility, predictability and accountability. Sprint Reviews with business stakeholders improved alignment and reduced ad-hoc requests by channeling them through proper planning.

  • Knowledge transfer methodology

    On the handovers side, I executed both incoming and outgoing transfers with zero service disruption. The structure I adopted - dedicated sessions + Confluence documentation - became a replicable model for the department.

  • Cross-departmental stakeholder management

    By working with so many stakeholders across every department of the group, I developed exceptional communication skills. Each department spoke its own "language" (financial, operational, technical), and I learned to translate between them as a core competency.

What could be improved

  • iPaaS migration - completed after my departure

    I did not land the iPaaS migration during my tenure despite convincing work, studies and presentations. Budget constraints and prioritization trade-offs spread the decision over time. A few months after my resignation, the teams launched the transformation - proof that my preparation paid off, even though I did not see the result directly.

  • Alert fatigue not fully resolved

    On the alert fatigue side, the move to ELK+mail I drove improved visibility but did not fully solve the signal-to-noise problem. In hindsight, I should have pushed for a more sophisticated alerting strategy with severity tiers and auto-remediation.

  • Documentation remained work-in-progress

    On documentation, the Confluence I produced was extensive but never reached the "living documentation" ideal. I documented some flows post-incident rather than proactively, creating knowledge gaps for less critical flows.

What I would do differently
1

Push harder on iPaaS migration

I would build a compelling ROI case earlier, quantifying the cost of TIBCO instability incidents in business terms (downtime hours × revenue impact) to accelerate executive decision-making.

2

Create a formal "Integration Catalog"

I would create a self-service portal where business departments can view all available flows, their status, SLAs, and request new integrations through a standardized process.

3

Invest more in automation testing

I would push further on automated integration tests for ESB flows - their absence forced me to rely on production monitoring for regression detection rather than pre-deployment validation.

The lasting lessons this project brought me

ESB is a political role

I experienced that managing integration means sitting at the intersection of every department. Beyond technique, I learned to mediate conflicting priorities, translate business needs and maintain trust - that is what makes the role succeed.

Knowledge transfer is an investment

The structured approach I developed proved invaluable. I take away that the upfront investment in time and documentation must be built into team culture - not into exit checklists.

Mixed teams require explicit norms

By mixing internals and contractors from several companies, I learned that explicit rules are non-negotiable: shared tools, deliberate knowledge-sharing rituals. Without them, I saw silos form on their own.

Monitor the monitors

A monitoring system generating thousands of alerts is not monitoring, it is making noise. I take away that effective observability requires constant curation: tune thresholds, kill false positives, keep alerts actionable.

Related journey

Professional experience linked to this achievement

Engineering Manager · Enterprise Application Integration

Skills applied

Technical and soft skills applied

Hard Skills

Architecture & Design4/5

Software & System Architecture

Supervised the architecture of 100+ production flows across 20+ enterprise systems, iPaaS evaluation

Infrastructure & Networks4/5

Tech & Field Versatility

Soft Skills

Leadership & Management5/5

Leadership & Team Management

Piloted a team of 1-7 developers (internal staff and contractors), full Agile ceremonies set up from scratch, coaching and Bus Factor prevention - 5 restructurings and 4 IT leadership changes absorbed while driving the iPaaS transformation vision - Structured inbound and outbound knowledge transfers, Confluence documentation became a department-wide replicable model. DORA-inspired metrics tracking, weekly 1:1 with every team member, annual reviews

Strategy, Finance & Growth4/5

Strategic Vision & Technical Direction

~370K EUR annual integration envelope, contract renegotiation (3-year rate locked), ~18K EUR/month infra OPEX

Project Management5/5

Project Piloting & Agile Methodologies

Daily interactions with ~80 stakeholders across every business department of the group, steering committees, vendor relationships. Multi-project portfolio in parallel: ESB Enterprise Integration, PIM, DAM, PSR, Ligneurs, Created Daily ESB + Sprint Planning / Review / Retrospective for the middleware team (Nov 2022 - Feb 2023) - Drove the 2022-2024 ESB roadmap, 903 days of workload planned, flow costing model built from scratch, Identified and mitigated 4 structural risks (infrastructure instability, knowledge concentration, alert fatigue, vendor lock-in) + blameless post-mortems

Communication & Collaboration4/5

Pedagogy & Communication & Collaboration

Translating between business languages (finance, hospitality, security), N+1/N+2 reporting, cross-team facilitation

Image gallery

Project screenshots and visuals

Groupe Pichet project committee workflow showing request management process across DSI, Product Owner, Lead Tech and infrastructure teams
Project committee - Request management workflow

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