Weekly API Evangelist Governance (Guidance)
Let’s give a warm Monday welcome to our documentation partner Theneo and our SDK partner APIMATIC. API Evangelist storytelling occurs because of Theneo and APIMATIC, and I am thankful to have their support for this exciting ride!
Could imagine if we could just pause any new API work for a month or two, and just take the moment to map out and make sense of the APIs we already have and use. I know it’s a delusional thought in today’s insane business climate, but imagine for just a second that we could, take the time to survey, assess, and consider what matters the most across our existing business operations.
I spent the week helping my customers realize that their OpenAPI is the same thing as the business requirements for their API, and I find that once you begin to see OpenAPI at this level, you will be less likely to freely give up your API intellectual property over to cloud services in this backwards OpenAPI world we live in. It this world OpenAPI is seen as the tangible outputs of a standardized governed API lifecycle, but OpenAPI really isn’t the thing—it really is just all about your teams working in concert.
Building on last week’s work to evaluate the default Spectral and Vacuum API governance rules, I profiled the default rulesets of Redocly and APIMATIC. And like OpenAPI, in the end API governance rules are not the thing—it is the tooling and awareness teams have around the rules. This awareness will replace the a strange silence amidst the noise of the everyone clamoring to govern the API sprawl that has emerged in the average enterprise organization.
If you want to make more sense of what I am talking about when it comes API governance I recommend our weekly API governance conversation at 12:00 PM EST. This weeks conversation focused how API governance provides a secure baseline for companies to begin working, looks at what a valid OpenAPI is, as well managing your OpenAPI source of truth, and what observability means to API governance.
The weekly API governance conversation has been very successful, which is something that has pushed me to pivot a bit on the weekly API knowledge builders on schema, APIs, rules, operations, changes, and evangelism. I have been charging hourly for these sessions, but will be opening the time slots up publicly for free, while making the original curriculum available via a 12 week email newsletter.
Ultimately I don’t want to be charging enterprise teams for the knowledge I provide, and I will continue exploring how I can convince API service providers to help fund this work that I am injecting into enterprise operations.
If you need API Evangelist to help out with API governance please let us know how we can help. And thank you again to APIMATIC and Theneo for their continued support. If you are interested in sponsoring our work and site please review out sponsorship package, and drop me an email today.