Building and Releasing APIs

A product-focused API provider can gather insights to groom a backlog of updates and decide whether to mature or shut down features or products through an iterative process of creating hypotheses, testing them, and unpacking discoveries. API providers have a responsibility to keep up with changing trends and the demands of developers so that they continue to meet the needs of their users and satisfy their curiosity.

On the other hand, projects normally have a defined beginning and finish time. In most cases, organizations that want to improve upon the results of a project must start from scratch by assembling a new team, securing additional money, and relaunching the program. This is a rather inconvenient method of doing things. As a result of having an MVP, continuing operational processes, and a product manager responsible for assessing and pushing the product’s performance from the start, businesses that adopt a product mindset are able to bring it to market and iterate more quickly.

APIs are used by customers to build their applications and changes to APIs can break their applications. This is why APIs evolve iteratively. To ensure that customers are not handed a half-baked process, an iterative release flow enables experimentation and user feedback before APIs are published to a wider audience. APIs are distributed and released to customers based on various factors, such as the maturity of the APIs and the target customer for which they are designed.

The following illustration shows how every development iteration of an API goes through the release process based on whether it is targeted for internal release, partner consumption, or public consumption. The illustration also shows how, based on the maturity of the API, we can identify the supporting API experience components to enable customers to use the APIs.