Performing a Technical Debt Audit on Existing Boomi Processes

Over the past few months, I’ve been performing technical debt audits across several existing Boomi integrations. It started as a small clean-up task, but soon became something much deeper – a way of understanding how much clarity and efficiency can be regained when you take time to refine what’s already built.

In integration work, deadlines often take priority over structure. Projects move quickly, business requirements evolve, and many integrations are passed down through multiple hands. By the time you open a process, it might have been built years ago , perhaps by a consultant or a developer who’s no longer around.

The process works, yes. But the story behind how or why it was built that way is often missing.

That’s exactly what I began to notice in our environment. Many integrations were running smoothly, but without documentation, context, or naming consistency. Each time I had to maintain or troubleshoot something, I first had to reverse-engineer the intent behind every shape and mapping. That’s when I decided to start a structured technical audit.

Step 1: Looking Under the Hood

When I started reviewing these processes, I wasn’t just looking for broken logic – I was looking for weak spots that could cause issues later.

Here’s what I found myself focusing on:

1. Hardcoded values Many processes contained URLs, credentials, or field names directly typed into shapes. It’s a shortcut that makes early testing easy but becomes a liability later, especially across environments. I’ve been gradually replacing those with Process Properties and Environment Extensions, so configuration stays clean and flexible.

2. Weak or missing error handling A few processes didn’t have proper Try/Catch flows or notifications. Failures could easily go unnoticed until downstream teams raised an issue. I’ve made it a point to standardise exception handling – clear paths, consistent logging, and alert notifications.

3. Lack of documentation This has been the biggest theme. Previous developers and consultants did the work well – the integrations functioned perfectly – but no documentation was left behind. No process notes, no mapping rationale, no design decisions. That lack of visibility doesn’t just slow down maintenance; it makes every small change feel risky. So now I maintain internal notes and comments directly inside Boomi, along with a shared documentation folder for each process flows.

4. Repeated logic across processes It was common to see identical transformations and mappings repeated in different integrations. To fix that, I’ve started creating reusable components and subprocesses. It saves time, reduces errors, and ensures updates remain consistent across all environments.

5. Overly complex Data Process shapes or scripting if you come across scripts written for data transformations that could probably be handled more cleanly using maps or business rules. Start simplifying these. My plan is to review where scripting is genuinely needed and where native Boomi functionality could make the process easier to maintain and understand.

Step 2: Creating a Technical Debt Register

Initially, I was performing these audits on my own – reviewing each process, making notes, and applying fixes as I went. But as I started uncovering recurring issues, I realised it would be more effective to make this a shared practice rather than a personal routine.

So, I created a Technical Debt Register – a simple spreadsheet that the entire team can use. It provides a consistent structure for identifying, tracking, and prioritising improvements across all our Boomi processes. Now, whenever anyone reviews or modifies a process, they can record what they find using the same format.

Article content — snapshot of the sheet to maintain

Step 3: Integrating Debt Fixes into Routine Work

I’ve learned that technical debt cleanup doesn’t need to be a massive initiative. It’s more effective when you build it into your normal development rhythm. Each sprint, I add one or two small refactoring tasks – fixing a hardcoded value, improving error handling, or adding documentation where it’s missing.

I also started applying a few rules for myself:

No deployment should include hardcoded values.
Each process must include clear error handling.
Comments and descriptions are not optional.

Over time, these small steps compound, and the environment starts to feel cleaner and more consistent.

Step 4: The Impact

The impact has been noticeable. Support teams now spend less time chasing errors because alerts are clearer. New developers can understand processes faster. Deployment to new environments is smoother because configuration is standardised.

But perhaps the biggest shift is cultural – the mindset of maintaining integration quality as an ongoing practice, not a one-time clean-up.

A Technical Debt Audit is not about finding faults in what others built. It’s about respecting what’s already working and making it sustainable for the long term.

Documentation isn’t glamorous, and refactoring doesn’t always make headlines. But in integration architecture, these quiet improvements create the real foundation for scalability and trust.

So if you’re maintaining existing Boomi processes – especially those inherited from previous developers or consultants – take a day to audit one. You’ll learn more than you expect, and you’ll make the future maintenance journey easier for yourself and everyone who follows.

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