,Preface
Welcome to the second edition of Continuous API Management. The opening paragraph for the
previous edition, released in 2018, stated:
As society and business have grown increasingly digital in nature, the demand for connected
software has exploded. In turn, the application programming interface (API) has emerged as an
important resource for modern organizations because it facilitates software connections. But
managing these APIs effectively has proven to be a new challenge. Getting the best value from
your APIs means learning how to manage their design, development, deployment, growth, quality,
and security while dealing with the complicating factors of context, time, and scale.
And, in the intervening years, not much has changed when it comes to the growth and challenges
of API management. The good news is that, in the years since our first edition, more tooling, more
training, and more experience has help grow and mature the API management space. The not-so-
good news is that the authors still see lots of organizations struggling to meet the demands of
connecting people, services, and companies using APIs. This new edition is our chance to provide
updates on how companies are progressing, share some new success stories, and refine some of
the material we first introduced in 2018.
While we’ve added new examples and updated existing ones, we’ve still retained the same basic
approach and outline for this new release. Hopefully these changes will help you extend your own
journey on the road to continuous API management.
Who Should Read This Book
If you are just starting to build an API program and want to understand the work ahead of you, or
if you already have APIs but want to learn how to manage them better, then this is the book for
you.
In this book, we’ve tried to build an API management framework that can be applied to more than
one context. In these pages you’ll find guidance that will help you to manage a single API that you
want to share with developers around the world, as well as advice for building a complex set of
APIs in a microservice architecture designed only for internal developers—and everything in
between.
We’ve also written this book to be as technologically neutral as possible. The advice and analysis
we provide is applicable to any API-based architecture, including HyperText Transfer Protocol
(HTTP), Create/Read/Update/Delete (CRUD), REpresentational State Transfer (REST),
GraphQL, and event-driven styles of interaction. This is a book for anyone who wants to improve
the decisions being made about their APIs.
What’s in This Book
,This book contains our collective knowledge from many years spent designing, developing, and
improving APIs—both our own and others’. We’ve distilled all that experience into this book.
We’ve identified two core factors for effective API development: adopting a product perspective
and implementing the right kind of team. We’ve also identified three essential factors for managing
that work: governance, product maturity, and landscape design.
These five elements of API management form a foundation on which you can build a successful
API management program. In this book, we introduce each of these topics and provide you with
guidance on how to shape them to fit your own organizational context.
The Outline
We’ve organized the book so that the scope of management concerns grows as you progress
through the chapters. We start by introducing the foundational concepts of decision-based
governance and the API as a product. This is followed by a tour of all the work that must be
managed when building an API product.
From this simple view of a single API, we then add the aspect of time as we dive into what it
means to change an API and how the maturity of the API impacts those change decisions. This is
followed by an exploration of the teams and people who do that change work. Finally, in the last
half of the book, we tackle the complexities of scale and the challenges of managing a landscape
of API products.
Here is a short summary of what you’ll find in each chapter:
Chapter 1, “The Challenge and Promise of API Management” introduces the API
management domain and explains why it’s so difficult to manage APIs effectively.
Chapter 2, “API Governance” explores governance from the perspective of decision-
based work—a foundational concept for API management.
Chapter 3, “The API as a Product” establishes the API-as-a-product perspective and
why it’s an essential part of any API strategy.
Chapter 4, “The Pillars of an API Product” outlines the ten essential pillars of work in
the API product domain. These pillars form a set of decision-making tasks that must
be managed.
Chapter 5, “Continuous API Improvement” provides insight into what it means to
change an API continuously. It introduces the need to adopt a continuous change
mentality and provides an understanding of the different types of API changes (and
their impacts) that you’ll encounter.
Chapter 6, “API Styles” is a new chapter for this edition. It explores the five most
common API styles we see as we visit with companies around the world and digs into
the strengths and drawbacks of each style to help you select the ones appropriate for
each use case you encounter.
Chapter 7, “The API Product Lifecycle” introduces the API product lifecycle, a
framework that will help you manage API work across the ten pillars over the life of
an API product.
, Chapter 8, “API Teams” addresses the people element of an API management system
by exploring the typical roles, responsibilities, and design patterns for an API team
over the life of an API product.
Chapter 9, “API Landscapes” adds the perspective of scale to the problem of managing
APIs. It introduces the eight Vs—variety, vocabulary, volume, velocity, vulnerability,
visibility, versioning, and volatility—that must be addressed when multiple APIs are
changing at the same time.
Chapter 10, “API Landscape Journey” outlines a continuous landscape design
approach for managing API changes continuously and at scale.
Chapter 11, “Managing the API Lifecycle in an Evolving Landscape” maps the
landscape perspective back to the API-as-a-product perspective and identifies how
API work changes when the landscape evolves around it.
Chapter 12, “Continuing the Journey” ties together the story of API management that
has emerged and provides advice on preparing for the future and starting your
journey today.
What’s Not in This Book
The scope of API management is big, and there is a massive amount of variation in contexts,
platforms, and protocols. Given the constraints of time and space when writing a book, it was
impossible for us to address all the specific implementation practices of API work. This book isn’t
a guide for designing a REST API or for picking a security gateway product. If you are looking
for a prescriptive guide to writing API code or designing an HTTP API, this isn’t the right book
for you.
While we do have examples that talk about specific practices, this isn’t an API implementation–
focused book (the good news is there are plenty of books, blogs, and videos available already to
help you fill that need). Instead, this book tackles a problem that is rarely addressed: how to
effectively manage the work of building APIs within a complex, continuously changing
organizational system.
Chapter 1. The Challenge and Promise of API
Management
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet.
Henry Mintzberg
According to an IDC report from 2019, 75% of the companies surveyed expected to be “digitally
transformed” in the next decade and expected that 90% of all new apps would feature microservice
architecture powered by APIs.1 It was also noted that, for API-focused organizations, up to 30%
of revenue was generated via digital channels. At the same time, these companies identified key
barriers to API adoption as “complexity,” “security,” and “governance.”
Welcome to the second edition of Continuous API Management. The opening paragraph for the
previous edition, released in 2018, stated:
As society and business have grown increasingly digital in nature, the demand for connected
software has exploded. In turn, the application programming interface (API) has emerged as an
important resource for modern organizations because it facilitates software connections. But
managing these APIs effectively has proven to be a new challenge. Getting the best value from
your APIs means learning how to manage their design, development, deployment, growth, quality,
and security while dealing with the complicating factors of context, time, and scale.
And, in the intervening years, not much has changed when it comes to the growth and challenges
of API management. The good news is that, in the years since our first edition, more tooling, more
training, and more experience has help grow and mature the API management space. The not-so-
good news is that the authors still see lots of organizations struggling to meet the demands of
connecting people, services, and companies using APIs. This new edition is our chance to provide
updates on how companies are progressing, share some new success stories, and refine some of
the material we first introduced in 2018.
While we’ve added new examples and updated existing ones, we’ve still retained the same basic
approach and outline for this new release. Hopefully these changes will help you extend your own
journey on the road to continuous API management.
Who Should Read This Book
If you are just starting to build an API program and want to understand the work ahead of you, or
if you already have APIs but want to learn how to manage them better, then this is the book for
you.
In this book, we’ve tried to build an API management framework that can be applied to more than
one context. In these pages you’ll find guidance that will help you to manage a single API that you
want to share with developers around the world, as well as advice for building a complex set of
APIs in a microservice architecture designed only for internal developers—and everything in
between.
We’ve also written this book to be as technologically neutral as possible. The advice and analysis
we provide is applicable to any API-based architecture, including HyperText Transfer Protocol
(HTTP), Create/Read/Update/Delete (CRUD), REpresentational State Transfer (REST),
GraphQL, and event-driven styles of interaction. This is a book for anyone who wants to improve
the decisions being made about their APIs.
What’s in This Book
,This book contains our collective knowledge from many years spent designing, developing, and
improving APIs—both our own and others’. We’ve distilled all that experience into this book.
We’ve identified two core factors for effective API development: adopting a product perspective
and implementing the right kind of team. We’ve also identified three essential factors for managing
that work: governance, product maturity, and landscape design.
These five elements of API management form a foundation on which you can build a successful
API management program. In this book, we introduce each of these topics and provide you with
guidance on how to shape them to fit your own organizational context.
The Outline
We’ve organized the book so that the scope of management concerns grows as you progress
through the chapters. We start by introducing the foundational concepts of decision-based
governance and the API as a product. This is followed by a tour of all the work that must be
managed when building an API product.
From this simple view of a single API, we then add the aspect of time as we dive into what it
means to change an API and how the maturity of the API impacts those change decisions. This is
followed by an exploration of the teams and people who do that change work. Finally, in the last
half of the book, we tackle the complexities of scale and the challenges of managing a landscape
of API products.
Here is a short summary of what you’ll find in each chapter:
Chapter 1, “The Challenge and Promise of API Management” introduces the API
management domain and explains why it’s so difficult to manage APIs effectively.
Chapter 2, “API Governance” explores governance from the perspective of decision-
based work—a foundational concept for API management.
Chapter 3, “The API as a Product” establishes the API-as-a-product perspective and
why it’s an essential part of any API strategy.
Chapter 4, “The Pillars of an API Product” outlines the ten essential pillars of work in
the API product domain. These pillars form a set of decision-making tasks that must
be managed.
Chapter 5, “Continuous API Improvement” provides insight into what it means to
change an API continuously. It introduces the need to adopt a continuous change
mentality and provides an understanding of the different types of API changes (and
their impacts) that you’ll encounter.
Chapter 6, “API Styles” is a new chapter for this edition. It explores the five most
common API styles we see as we visit with companies around the world and digs into
the strengths and drawbacks of each style to help you select the ones appropriate for
each use case you encounter.
Chapter 7, “The API Product Lifecycle” introduces the API product lifecycle, a
framework that will help you manage API work across the ten pillars over the life of
an API product.
, Chapter 8, “API Teams” addresses the people element of an API management system
by exploring the typical roles, responsibilities, and design patterns for an API team
over the life of an API product.
Chapter 9, “API Landscapes” adds the perspective of scale to the problem of managing
APIs. It introduces the eight Vs—variety, vocabulary, volume, velocity, vulnerability,
visibility, versioning, and volatility—that must be addressed when multiple APIs are
changing at the same time.
Chapter 10, “API Landscape Journey” outlines a continuous landscape design
approach for managing API changes continuously and at scale.
Chapter 11, “Managing the API Lifecycle in an Evolving Landscape” maps the
landscape perspective back to the API-as-a-product perspective and identifies how
API work changes when the landscape evolves around it.
Chapter 12, “Continuing the Journey” ties together the story of API management that
has emerged and provides advice on preparing for the future and starting your
journey today.
What’s Not in This Book
The scope of API management is big, and there is a massive amount of variation in contexts,
platforms, and protocols. Given the constraints of time and space when writing a book, it was
impossible for us to address all the specific implementation practices of API work. This book isn’t
a guide for designing a REST API or for picking a security gateway product. If you are looking
for a prescriptive guide to writing API code or designing an HTTP API, this isn’t the right book
for you.
While we do have examples that talk about specific practices, this isn’t an API implementation–
focused book (the good news is there are plenty of books, blogs, and videos available already to
help you fill that need). Instead, this book tackles a problem that is rarely addressed: how to
effectively manage the work of building APIs within a complex, continuously changing
organizational system.
Chapter 1. The Challenge and Promise of API
Management
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet.
Henry Mintzberg
According to an IDC report from 2019, 75% of the companies surveyed expected to be “digitally
transformed” in the next decade and expected that 90% of all new apps would feature microservice
architecture powered by APIs.1 It was also noted that, for API-focused organizations, up to 30%
of revenue was generated via digital channels. At the same time, these companies identified key
barriers to API adoption as “complexity,” “security,” and “governance.”
