Another challenge is keeping the project aligned with business goalsas people come and go within MetLife over time. "Our businesses canchange a lot over the period of a year, but it's going to take morethan one year to build a customer information file," says MarkHammersmith, senior vice president and CIO of institutional business,whose 33 million customers will eventually live in the CIF.

Architectural Integration

MetLife Senior Vice President and CTO Steve Sheinheit says integratingapplications and data related to the CIF and PeopleSoft projects isthe most difficult integration work under way at MetLife. Despite hisattempts to downplay his role, much of the integration work begins orends with Sheinheit. He's responsible for the entireinfrastructure - from the desktops to the mainframes - and oversees a budgetof $300 million and a staff of 1,100 in seven locations. "When I came,in some ways, the hard work had been done. The buy-in was there. Theunderstanding of the value was there," says Sheinheit. "I just came inand did a lot of execution."

Early on, Sheinheit established an enterprise architecture program andgovernance council with representatives from each of MetLife'sbusiness units. "We had to start by bringing together representativesfrom the business and technology groups to figure out how we weregoing to establish a whole greater than the sum of its parts for thiscompany," he says.