Internet, industry, market, and government standards help make APIs more consistent, but also save time and money for both producer and consumer, while keeping APIs better aligned with existing industry areas of interoperability and reuse.
Standards
Strategies
APIs Are Aligned with Industry Using Standards
All APIs must be using relevant Internet, industry, and government standards available, ensuring to properly research areas of operations to see what existing standards may exist before the creatio...
APIs Are Interoperable Across Systems
All APIs must prioritize interoperability by using standard media types, hypermedia link relations, and well-known specifications, enabling consumers to integrate multiple APIs together and reducin...
Experiences
Access
Gaining the necessary access to effectively use an API is often more challenging than it appears. Intentional and unintentional barriers can create friction in discovering and onboarding with an AP...
Alignment
Achieving alignment between teams producing APIs and their consumers is a persistent challenge in API operations. Effective collaboration between business and technical stakeholders requires ongoin...
Automation
Automating business operations is a primary driver for adopting and governing APIs, enabling organizations to achieve the scale, speed, and quality needed to remain competitive in global markets. A...
Change
Managing and effectively communicating changes across one or more APIs is a leading cause of instability and friction in enterprise operations. While these changes often surface in applications use...
Communication
Consistent communication about the production and consumption of APIs is critical for effective enterprise governance. APIs are inherently difficult to visualize, making it essential to invest in m...
Consistency
Achieving consistency in the design, delivery, and maintenance of HTTP APIs across an enterprise is a significant challenge—one that often complicates API operations. Small differences, such as var...
Discovery
The average enterprise maintains approximately 0.5 APIs per employee, making it a constant challenge to track the growing inventory of HTTP APIs being produced and consumed. Enterprises often addre...
Legal
The legal aspects of producing and consuming APIs can quickly derail even the best-laid plans for API producers and disrupt the roadmaps of developers building applications and integrations. Terms ...
Onboarding
Transitioning from API discovery to integration as a consumer requires a well-defined and streamlined API onboarding process. Onboarding begins with discovery and relies heavily on clear documentat...
Quality
The quality of HTTP APIs powering an enterprise tends to decline as the number of ungoverned APIs grows across internal, partner, and public landscapes. Low-quality APIs lead to poor downstream exp...
Reliability
If an API isn’t reliable, consumers will eventually look for alternatives. Reliability starts with the platform and infrastructure where the API is deployed, but it also depends heavily on the pace...
Security
API security is a top priority for any enterprise, with even higher standards for externally available APIs. However, security doesn’t end with the APIs an enterprise produces—it also applies to co...
Self-Service
Self-service is the experience of a consumer being able to discover, access, and integrate an API without having to talk to a human. Portals, sign-up flows, documentation, and keys let developers g...
Simplicity
Simplicity is a hallmark of well-designed HTTP APIs, but achieving simplicity requires effort. The likelihood that a partner or third-party developer will abandon an API increases as cognitive load...
Lifecycle
balance Governance Production
Governance is how everything on this lifecycle stays aligned as an operation scales. Policies, rules, and standards applied consistently across teams are what keep APIs coherent without slowing eve...
