API Management: The Big Opportunity!

Here is a Getting started guide based on Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model

1. Urgency: APIs as a product offering is nothing new. In fact not having a developer portal can be a rather severe weakness in this day and age.
2. Coalition: The timing cannot be better with the recent collaborations between the Business and IT teams in the Integration space.
3. Vision: The future is sustainable revenue growth and speed to market made possible by a deeper integration with the partners and an ecosystem using the APIs.
4. Program: This is not a single project; but an initiative with all teams will be using and benefiting from the program rollout.
5. Impediments: The main obstacle is the learning curve with new tools and/or platforms. Several training and certification programs can be leveraged to overcome this.
6. Quick-hits: With a pilot project — release a new feature by using new capability and win confidence in the journey ahead.
7. Sprints: Establish a repeatable process for the SCRUM team/s to enable continuous delivery of value to end users.
8. Culture: API management is more of a mindset than skill-set that enables the organization a modern startup-like culture of collaboration.

Shared Needs -

• Build and operate communities around APIs for developers and partners
• Ensure discovery, learning and use of the APIs effectively — define and engage every step of the journey
• Provide a personalized, branded experience — look and feel, and site structure
• Improvise and implement best practices in community engagement
• Analyze and understand the activity in the ecosystem

More of -

• API Design: APIs should be designed to help developers focus on building applications and experiences that will satisfy end users, not get bogged down by integration shenanigans.
• REST API definitions should contain key elements like request/response structures, query parameters, version strategy, and security schemes.
• Autonomy and Alignment: API management should be a full time activity with dedicated resources sponsored from executive level with agile project management, defined roles and responsibilities, and communication plan with internal teams and external partners

Less of -

• SOA (Service Oriented Architecture): WSDL etc. should be categorized as legacy and separated from REST API offerings
• Defining the entire needs of the API initiative solely on the needs of the first project

Summary

Partner ecosystem community managers will play a significant role in the API economy and the API management process and tools will be more common. There is a huge momentum in this space as predicted by a Forrester Research article with the following key takeaways:

• Community managers and ecosystem strategists
• Influencer channel made up of affinity partners, referral agents, affiliates, advocates
• Partnered with vendors building a tech partner ecosystem
• Partner Experience (PX) Will Catch Up To Customer Experience (CX/UX)
• How to be visible everyday