API Maturity

API governance is utilized to drive consistency and trust through the development of APIs, but most of the work that teams do on API governance prior to APIs being published is completely hidden from the end customer. Like all great designs, the customers only experience a polished product and don’t notice the thoughtful details in the background that make it all possible.

Although the internal stages of the API life cycle are hidden from the customer, what is visible to the customer is API maturity. API maturity is a label that companies give to their APIs to set expectations with the customer regarding supportability, versioning, and backward compatibility, among others.

The following diagram illustrates the different levels of maturity that an API goes through as it gets developed and is released to customers.