Stop Building the Wrong APIs
“If you build it, they will come” does not apply to APIs. If you build the wrong APIs, or prematurely release one before you have had sufficient input and collaboration, no one will come.
The oft-repeated phrase (from the film Field of Dreams), “If you build it, [they] will come” does not apply to APIs.
If you build the wrong APIs, or prematurely release one before you have had sufficient input and collaboration, no one will come. So, rather than build a baseball field that remains empty, you want to build one that attracts the players and the fans.
As we keep saying, it’s an API-connected world – and growing the number of APIs your company provides across a multitude of use-cases has become increasingly easy. Maybe too easy.
Quick creation and delivery of ad hoc APIs may seem like a praise-worthy, customer objective. However, a lack of developer feedback and collaboration through direct engagement with your developer ecosystem (for example, with events such as hackathons), might encourage you to prematurely release flawed APIs.
A prematurely released API, one lacking sufficient input and collaboration API would potentially (at least in retail):
- Have inadequate consumer messaging
- Lack a compelling design
- Undersell the product/service
- Fail to provide a powerful customer user experience
From an API product-development perspective, like anything else of value, we shouldn’t confuse quantity with quality. Like our data, we need to trust the quality of our APIs and trust their deliberative process of collaborative development.
API Engagement Platform
What if you could have both speed and quality by organically empowering your API developers through the creation of a highly collaborative API development community and ecosystem?
You can. Software AG’s Engage supports interactive collaboration as part of a developer’s out-reach life cycle. It enables collaboration not only across your departmental API developer community, but also across all business units and even 3rd party API developers.
To facilitate a methodical approach to maximizing success for developer communities, Engage supports the following base requirements:
- Nurturing the API ecosystem: Organically nurture developers through connections with marketing automation, enabling feedback tied to API usage and adoption.
- Hackathons and beta programs: Broaden your understanding of how developers use or benefit from your APIs. Let that feedback inform next steps.
- Direct feedback engagement: Incorporate timely feedback as part of your developer outreach cycle.
- Enrich/grow business in real time: Actual metrics and reports generated that augment continuous improvement in your development cycles.
Stop building APIs that don’t attract the players and fans. Click here to watch the webinar.
Click below to learn how to better collaborate and engage during the development process.