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maturity.md

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Maturity

Not all APIs are created equal. Still, many things we apply to our public APIs can help prepare our less mature internal APIs for consumption beyond internal teams. Without a clear understanding of what constitutes maturity across various APIs, teams are left trying to do the best they can in the moment. However, once we have a structured way of defining and communicating what API maturity means, we can better comprehend where each of our APIs stand.

Elements

  • Version - An organization-wide approach to versioning and communicating APIs provides a foundation for defining maturity. APIs tend to mature as they change, and versioning facilitates community maturity.
  • Consumers - One of the best ways to mature and harden an API is for people to use it. Each consumer of your API provides one more potential vote in your API maturity ranking, helping validate that you are heading in the right direction.
  • Metrics - Possessing, reporting upon, and regularly questioning the metrics you are using to define success of your APIs will shape how you define maturity. A lack of measurement means you are unlikely to move forward in ways you know about and can learn from.
  • Feedback - Receiving feedback from your API consumers, then incorporating that feedback intelligently into your roadmap is how you “hear” your APIs. The more mature your feedback loop is, the more mature your APIs and your operations will be.
  • Reliability - Having a baseline of testing, security, and governance for your APIs provides the reliability you need to convey maturity to your consumers. Nobody will consider your API mature if you break contracts and do not perform as expected.
  • Lifecycle - One of the things that will help you offer more mature digital resources, capabilities, and experiences is having a well-defined and well- executed life cycle. Without a shared understanding of each step, your teams will never reach maturity.
  • Observability - Observability means being able to understand and control the state of your APIs using the existing outputs of your operations. It is key to API maturity. If you can’t measure and see your APIs and the operations around them, you’ll never stabilize your APIs.
  • Governance - You must eEstablish a baseline for the consistency of your APIs and the life cycle around them to mature the API products you deliver across domains, and teams. Becoming more consistent is an important part of achieving API maturity.

Just as achieving maturity means different things to different people or businesses, achieving API maturity depends on your overall business strategy and operations. Still, mature API operations do share some common characteristics. They also lack the chaos and unreliability of less mature API operations. Discussing API maturity will help you realize what you need to do to deliver more reliable API products that meet the needs of your applications and integrations.