(4) About Me

• Ph.D. in Communications Systems [http://dret.net/netdret/publications#wil97b] from ETH Zürich [http://www.ethz.ch/] (1997)
• Research at ETH Zürich [http://www.ethz.ch/] (1997-2006) and UC Berkeley [http://www.berkeley.edu/] (2006-2011)
• EMC (2011-2014), API architecture for Documentum workflow products
• Siemens (2014-2015), working on the Web of Things (APIs for IoT)
• Part of CA [http://www.ca.com/]'s API Academy [http://www.apiacademy.co/] 2016-2019 focusing on API Design and Management
• Partner at Good API [https://www.goodapi.co/] in 2019 focusing on Digital Transformation and API Strategy
• Joined Axway [https://www.axway.com/]'s Catalysts [https://www.axway.com/services/catalysts] in 2019 for driving the Accelerate program [https://accelerate.axway.com/]
• Active in the usual places such as Twitter [http://twitter.com/dret], GitHub [http://github.com/dret], and LinkedIn [http://www.linkedin.com/in/netdret]

(5) Axway [https://www.axway.com/] Catalysts [https://www.axway.com/catalysts]

• Small team with three core missions
  • Improve customer success by helping to make good decisions
  • Provide thought-leadership in the API and digital transformation space
  • Improve Axway by following the principles that we preach
• Team members are distributed globally
  • Uli Hitzel: @u1i [http://twitter.com/u1i]
  • Kay Lummitsch: @lummitsch [http://twitter.com/lummitsch]
  • Emmanuel Methivier: @e_methivier [http://twitter.com/e_methivier]
  • David Morgan
  • Brian Otten: @bottencatalyst [http://twitter.com/bottencatalyst]
  • Brian Pagano: @brianpagano [http://twitter.com/brianpagano]
  • John Wiese
  • Erik Wilde: @dret [http://twitter.com/dret]

(6) Continuous API Management (2018)

• Continuous API Management: Making the Right Decisions in an Evolving Landscape
  • O'Reilly book page [https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/continuous-api-management/9781492043546/]
  • Amazon book page [https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Api-Management-Decisions-Landscape/dp/1492043559]
• Authored by 2018 API Academy [http://www.apiacademy.co/] members
  • Mehdi Medjaoui: @medjawii [http://twitter.com/medjawii]
  • Erik Wilde: @dret [http://twitter.com/dret]
  • Ronnie Mitra: @mitraman [http://twitter.com/mitraman]
  • Mike Amundsen: @mamund [http://twitter.com/mamund]

(8) Start Small

• Identify low-hanging fruit for quick success and feedback
  • API Archaeology is a good way to find candidates
• Switch from building systems to cultivating ecosystems
  • Focus on constraints (what to do) over rules (how to do it)
  • Only govern when you must (autonomy) and not when you can (authority)
• Start building a culture and a community
  • API Guidelines should reflect the lived reality in an organization

(9) Design for Change

• Ecosystem architecture and system architecture are distinct disciplines
  • APIs allow you to start building a landscape of API products
  • How to build API products is a different and distinct task
• The role of ecosystem architecture is to support development teams
  • Constrain them as much as necessary but as little as possible
  • Cleanly separate constraints from how to implement them
  • Provide support for following constraints and testing for them
• Always ask yourself how much effort it is to change course
  • Good ecosystem architecture scales over size and time and change frequency

(10) Cultivate the Landscape

• Be clear on your vision and strategy
• Start with small and focused effort and teams
• Build up competencies and ways to share them across teams
• Shift from centralized systems to decentralized ecosystems

(11) Scaling is not Easy

(13) Two Common API Goals

(14) Scenario 1: Engaging in the API Economy

• Direct API monetization
• API foundation for user journeys (omni-channel)
• Value chain optimization (outsourced APIs)

(15) Scenario 2: APIs for Modular Architecture

• Moving from integration to interconnection (IT modernization)
• Decoupling products and their development cycles and speed
• Improving capability reuse across the whole organization

(17) Mind the Gap

(18) API Strategy = Pillars × Perspectives

(19) Create a Culture of Caring and Sharing

• Why does the guideline exist?
  • Rationale for creating the guideline
• What can be done to address the described issue
  • At least one good solution for addressing the issue
• How to implement the solution
  • At least one way to use the solution in practice
• Testing that the guideline has been followed
  • Some tests can be automated but many will be by declaration or review

(21) Der Weg ist das Ziel

• Avoid a waterfall model for your API journey
• Start small and iterate and learn from the process
• Design for change because change is the only constant
• Build communities that cultivate and evolve practices

(22) Thank You!

• Slides online: dret.net/lectures/api-congress-2020 [http://dret.net/lectures/api-congress-2020]
• More information:
  • Twitter: @dret [http://twitter.com/dret]
  • YouTube: youtube.com/ErikWilde [https://www.youtube.com/ErikWilde]
  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/netdret [http://www.linkedin.com/in/netdret]
  • Web: dret.net/netdret/ [http://dret.net/netdret/]