Require that every API names its maintainers, the real people or team accountable for its design, operation, and support, and records them where the contract lives. I care about this from the very first define stage because an API with no clear owner is an orphan waiting to happen, and orphaned APIs are how outages, security holes, and abandoned integrations get created. Naming maintainers gives consumers someone to reach, gives governance someone to hold accountable, and makes collaboration across teams possible instead of a guessing game. Ownership is the foundation everything else in the lifecycle is built on.
Maintainers
Strategies
API Development Is Collaborative Across Teams
API development must be a collaborative effort across product, engineering, and operations teams, with shared workspaces, design reviews, and cross-functional feedback loops that ensure APIs reflec...
Experiences
Collaboration
APIs are a team sport, and collaboration is the experience of many people working together to produce and consume them. Designers, developers, product owners, technical writers, and consumers all t...
Governance
Governance is the experience of keeping API operations consistent and aligned as they scale across teams and time. It is the discipline that connects strategy at the top to the rules being enforced...
Provenance
Failing to understand your API history increases the risk of repeating past mistakes in future API development. Establishing provenance for each API helps track changes over time and ensures new ow...
Lifecycle
dns Domains Define
Every API begins with the domain it serves. Before I write a single line of a definition I get clear on the business domain, the bounded context, and who owns it, because the domain is what keeps a...
