For many organizations, beginning a MuleSoft initiative is an exciting new chapter in their IT evolution. However, initial planning and kick off can be a daunting task and companies often struggle with maximizing the value of a MuleSoft investment as a result of inefficient practices, legacy design patterns, or lack of experience. To make things easier, MuleSoft is fairly intuitive to use and Salesforce provides quite a few well-designed training options. There are also plenty of forums, blogs, and discussion boards to search on for knowledge. To further help the Mule community, AVIO has contributed several open-source accelerators to provide immediate access to best practices.
However, it is important to recognize possessing technical knowledge is very different from applying that knowledge to practices and patterns that will be beneficial. As we’ve seen with multiple clients, there are plenty of MuleSoft certified developers who have the knowledge to develop in Mule and get things to work. But what we’ve also frequently seen are developers who know how to develop in Mule, but can not articulate the rationale or reasoning for their approach. They may have found an example on a forum or had a pattern they’ve used on a previous project and leveraged it without putting much thought into if the contexts were the same. There may be different performance requirements, best practices may not have been followed, etc. However, they were tasked to make something work and they did! This tends to be where we see clients struggle when adopting MuleSoft.
As we talk with organizations either evaluating MuleSoft or struggling to maximize their Mule investment, a question we often get asked is, “How do we evaluate the type of MuleSoft help we need?”
We typically talk about three primary areas in which a strong MuleSoft partner can be a force multiplier on a MuleSoft journey.
- Establishing a Strong MuleSoft Foundation
- Adopting Modern Development Practices
- Facilitating Knowledge Transfer
A Strong Foundation
In order to establish a strong MuleSoft foundation, clients often look to AVIO Consulting to provide a blueprint for success. There is no faster way to an underwhelming implementation and buyer’s remorse than by starting off on the wrong foot. When beginning a MuleSoft initiative, several key elements need to be discussed, analyzed, and structured to provide a solid foundation on which to build the MuleSoft strategy. AVIO’s Accelerated Success was constructed based on decades of experience to ensure our clients get the foundation right as quickly as possible. By understanding our client’s API strategies and objectives, we can tailor our Accelerated Success program to complement our client’s existing environment while ensuring best practices are leveraged. As part of our Accelerated Success, we cover everything from the initial design of the MuleSoft environments to production best practices. This end to end coverage enables our clients to have confidence their MuleSoft foundation is well designed and stable.
Modern Software Development Practices
However, as important as having a strong Mule foundation is, understanding and proficiency in MuleSoft development is only a small component of a successful MuleSoft strategy. To maximize the value of the MuleSoft platform, organizations need to adopt modern software engineering and application development practices. The ability for a partner to be consultative and not just provide development capacity is critical. AVIO provides robust knowledge and thought leadership in other areas that are key to successfully implementing MuleSoft: agile methodologies, automated testing, CI/CD principles, enterprise security, and cloud architecture. By having a comprehensive understanding of how to marry the adoption of MuleSoft with modern software development practices, our clients are able to accelerate the value of the platform and maximize the benefits. And because we recognize the importance of these ancillary components, AVIO has invested in building out several frameworks and capabilities. Some of these we have open-sourced and shared with the Mule community. For example, in order to provide robust security capabilities, AVIO open sourced a Hashicorp Vault Connector for Mule 4 that enables our clients to utilize the robust secrets management capabilities provided by Vaul from within Mule 4 applications. By utilizing a MuleSoft delivery partner that can help with modern application development competencies, like security, as well as MuleSoft capabilities, organizations adopting Mule have a much higher probability of a successful engagement.
Knowledge Transfer
The third area in which organizations often look for a strong partner in their MuleSoft journey is in facilitating knowledge transfer and mentorship. There is often a thought that developers who go through training immediately become highly proficient and productive. However, applying this expectation to learning to drive shows us this is unrealistic. I would not feel comfortable with my 15 year old going through a driver’s education course and then expecting him to jump into a race car and keep it on the track. Much less be competitive. There is always a progression of experience and knowledge that is critical. However, in software development, an immediate proficiency expectation is fairly standard but sets clients up for a less than ideal result. With more than 250 successful MuleSoft projects under our belt, AVIO Consulting has identified the most effective ways to accelerate the path to become a highly proficient MuleSoft developer. We have been able to create a robust curriculum combining classroom learning, hands-on workshops, real-time mentorship, and best practices guidelines that help to ensure new Mule developers can become as productive as possible.
With the help of AVIO, beginning a MuleSoft initiative doesn’t have to be a daunting task. With our extensive MuleSoft knowledge and best practices, we can help you build a strong foundation with the most efficient modern software development practices.
About AVIO
For many organizations, beginning a MuleSoft initiative can seem like a daunting task and they often struggle with maximizing the value of their MuleSoft investment as a result of inefficient practices, patterns, or lack of experience. There isn’t too much magic that goes into making MuleSoft work for a particular integration. MuleSoft is fairly intuitive to use, Salesforce provides quite a few well-designed training options, and there are plenty of forums and boards to obtain knowledge. To further help the Mule community, AVIO has contributed several open-source accelerators to provide immediate access to best practices.