Version 1.0 | March 2026
ISAF is a five-phase methodology for designing and implementing integration infrastructure in regulated industries (healthcare, financial services, fintech, insurtech). It was developed through over a decade of enterprise integration work and published as an open framework.
Live at: operfildoluiz.github.io/isaf
The five phases of ISAF, in sequence:
- D — Diagnostic Assessment — Map the environment before designing anything
- I — Architectural Integration — Canonical data model + unified communication layer
- A — Intelligent Automation — Automate pipelines, not individual tasks
- C — Compliance Engineering — Runs in parallel with phases 2 and 3; compliance as an architectural property
- O — Continuous Optimization — Proactive improvement on a trusted foundation
The full technical exposition, including a detailed case study with quantified outcomes:
Goncalves, Luiz Henrique Carrilho. (2026). "Why Most System Integration Projects Fail and the Five-Phase Framework That Fixes It." Medium. https://medium.com/@operfildoluiz/why-most-system-integration-projects-fail-and-the-five-phase-framework-that-fixes-it-753ddee48170
Contributions are welcome for:
- Typos and clarity fixes — open a pull request directly
- Structural suggestions — open an issue describing the proposed change and the reasoning behind it
- Industry-specific additions — new regulatory contexts (Phase 4), workflow patterns (Phase 3), or sector case studies
Please keep contributions consistent with the framework's design principles: technology-neutral, sequence-driven, and grounded in observed failure patterns rather than theory.
Goncalves, Luiz Henrique Carrilho. (2026).
Integrated System Architecture Framework (ISAF), Version 1.0.
https://operfildoluiz.github.io/isaf
CC BY-ND 4.0 — You may share this work with attribution. Modifications and derivatives are not permitted.
Author: Luiz Goncalves — Senior Software Engineer & System Integration Architect