The Api Owner's Manual
THE API OWNER’S MANUAL THE API OWNER’S | MANFRED BORTENSCHLAGER & STEVEN WILLMOTT & STEVEN MANFRED BORTENSCHLAGER THE API OWNER’S MANUAL Best practices of successful API teams MANFRED BORTENSCHLAGER STEVEN WILLMOTT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY APIs are becoming the digital connective tissue of modern organizations, adding new capabilities to everything from their operations and products to their partnership strategies. It’s no longer a stretch to say that most organizations don’t ask whether to engage in API programs, but how to do so. This ebook aims to answer this question by drawing on best practices from leading practitioners in seven areas key to the success of effective API programs: 1. Focus relentlessly on the value of the API 2. Make the business model clear from the beginning 3. Design and implement with the user in mind 4. Place API operations at the top of the list 5. Obsess about developer experience 6. Go beyond marketing 101 7. Remember API retirement and change management By the end of this book you will have gained an overview about how a successful API program runs and holds together, along with best practices about how to make that happen. We’ve included a number of examples of successful API programs, including Amazon, APIdaze, Context.IO, eBay, Flickr, Lingo24, Netflix, Pingar, SendGrid, Senzari MusicGraph, Slice, Stripe, and Twilio. 3 Most importantly, after going through this book, we hope you’ll have asked yourself key questions about your own plans, and will have the right focus needed to create a valuable API. We wish you
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