[Brenton House] What is API First?
Is API First the same as API First Design?
Is API First a process?
Is API First a methodology?
Is API First a buzzword?
Or maybe all of the above?
Today we invite Brian Otten on API Cookery to talk to us about what API First really
is.
Stay tuned to find out more!
(Awesome intro and music for API Cookery with Brenton House)
[Brenton] Today we have Brian Otten.
Brian is an experienced leader and technologist with 25 plus years of experience and has worked
with large enterprises to define API strategies to support digital transformation and continued
growth.
He is currently working as a catalyst for Axway where he helps make businesses consumable
by guiding them with the power of transformation with APIs.
Welcome to API Cookery, Brian!
[Brian Otten] Hey thanks Brenton!
It's great to be here!
Yeah wow!
You made it sound like i've been at this for a long time and it certainly feels like that!
[Brenton] Well you've had quite the career in tech and APIs and i just wanted to pick
your brain today.
There's a lot of discussion lately about API First and what it is and I thought you would
be the perfect person to explain to all of us what exactly is API First.
[Brian] Yeah, I think there's a lot of confusion about API First and I like to distinguish
API First by saying you really have to start with thinking about your business and how
you're reimagining that business or if you're starting out, what is that business going
to look like?
So it's it's very much linked to strategy.
It's very much linked to how you want to turn your business model or merge your business
model with the emerging technology model.
For that, most companies think of that as how do I either create a digital platform
where I can take the world-class products and services that i've got and make them consumable
and then also extend that out so I can make my company really easy to work with and make
all of those things consumable.
That's where the API comes in.
I think that's where the distinction is.
API First is then saying okay, so if we have this view of our business as capabilities
with the products and services that are going to deliver those, what would it look like
if we just imagined that as a set of API products, meaning a bunch of APIs working together to
get the data, to provide the access, to make it secure and then that would be the API First
way.
We start there.
We don't start with building the applications or looking at the back ends systems of record
and all that.
So it's really is API First and it's a big big change for a lot of organizations, a big
strategic move.
[Brenton] So from your experience, is API First a hard concept for enterprises to wrap
their head around?
[Brian] I think it is and you have other kind of what I would call kind of sub-categories
of that or practices within an API First strategy that come into play so sometimes people confuse
API First with API Design First right and design thinking and stuff like that that i
would see as part of the operations to create digital products right so does thinking about
design first is an essential part of API First to make API First really work, you would do
it with API Design First.
I think a lot of people get confused and say what's the difference between API First and
API Design First and I would say, you know API First is the first thing is having that
map having, that reimagined view of your business as a set of working APIs, interoperable APIs,
and then within that, you're using things like: What is the value proposition of an
api right?
What is the business model behind the product we're going to create?
That then informs a really good design so you're not just building apps writing codes
straight from there.
You're doing the API Design First based on the API First way, which is: How did we imagine
this solution? or how do we solve some kind of business problem and get some real business
outcomes out of this thing by having a good design as part of that.
[Brenton] That's so true doing things right from the start can help with every step of
the process and i'm glad you brought up api design first because there is a lot of confusion
out there about what the difference is between api first and the api design first from what
i've found a lot of the content that's labeled api first is really content about api design
first another hot topic out there is full api lifecycle management i know you've already
touched on this but how does the api first fit into the full api lifecycle management
process or is it part of the process at all?
[Brian] Yeah it really is.
If you think of API First as like a strategic approach so that people are strategically
aligned, the delivery is aligned before you even get started.
That's the first part of it but I think what I like to do, and how we're helping customers
work through this in a in a way that's real, where they're actually doing a delivery, is
thinking about the lifecycle as a set of pipelines at work because that's the way it really works.
You know you mentioned all those, you know I worked in large enterprises large banks,
large governmental institutions.
The problem is that you have operational stuff going on in various areas where people normally
don't talk or if they do, they don't have really good collaboration methods.
They don't ever sit in the same room and, I know, now we we don't sit in the same room
or even in the same virtual room and you know that's where the problems are.
If you if we think about the people who are coming up with the innovation, the people
who want to improve customer experience, the people who want to make sure that we protect
your data and build a platform that's going to be taking the business into the next generation
and making sure that it's sustainable building an ecosystem all of that kind of stuff.
That's business operational work somebody is guiding that strategy.
Somebody's coming up with the ideas for digital products and needing to make those available
and consumable, hence the power of the API First way.
But then you have, on the other end, another pipeline which we might refer to as DevOps.
Right?
And I know you're a very big DevOps advocate.
You work with development communities and that has seen a lot of area of improvement.
If you think about it, that's just one part of the lifecycle that's you know if you're
improving one part of a system, that's great, but it's really the overall system that needs
to improve.
I think where a lot of customers that we work with, a lot of organizations have already
taken great strides to do and improve their DevOps to continuously deploy, to continuously
integrate, to speed that process up, from going from what is specified what is the the
thing we need to build to the code to the running to the deployment to the change management
to the all of that stuff and optimizing all of that which is great but there's something
missing there's something in the middle and that's something I like to call ProductOps.
So you've got the business Ops I've described where you're taking that reimagined set of
capabilities and doing your digital ideas and making them come to life through your
platform.
You've got DevOps, but even then you can't guarantee that the stuff that the people are
doing in the business office pipeline are actually getting that realized as something
of value and that's where ProductOps comes in because product people think about value.
They think about consumption.
They think about who's using it.
Right? and that I think, is the missing link that gets so many organizations in trouble
because you know you can't guarantee that what's coming out of the DevOps pipeline and
finally getting deployed and running is really going to solve the problems and quantify that
and make sure that you can show that this is a success.
Right?
How is my product launch a success?
So i think that's a good way to kind of elevate and kind of say how would how would a team
or how would a set of teams across a whole line of business or even, you know , outside
your business.
How would they work together in accepting the fact that there are different pipelines
of work that really need to start to come together without so many hard walls and and
silos.
[Brenton] Well, I know you've taken this message to a lot of different enterprises across a
lot of different industries but if you had to guess, what percentage of businesses and
enterprises are aware of and maybe have a good understanding of the processes that they
need to follow to create a successful API platform for their business?
[Brian] Yeah i would say most.
I would say like 95 percent.
I would say, you know, most or 75 percent of statistics are made up on the spot.
But, you know, most, let's just say, most of the organizations that I'm working with
and that actually works with you know we go in and they are aware right.
So you'll have a business transformation team.
I'm working with one large healthcare provider and they have a business transformation team
project.
That's the other thing is thinking of it as a project.
It is also a kind of a trap you know where it's not it's it's actually the culture; it's
the mindset; it's behavior and communication practices; it's the technology platform that
brings everybody together.
That's really what we're talking about.
Right?
So companies will say we are doing transformation, we have a maturity digital transformation
assessment that we've got available on the x-way website and it seems like a lot of companies
are experimenting rather than kind of having a very structured approach to it so i think
that's again where api first really kind of helps bring stuff together because you can
take a transformation team that's really geared up thinking about design thinking thinking
about the product ops world and getting people in place who have that kind of mindset but
then you can actually join that up to how the stuff actually gets gets delivered and
built i think that's the main challenge is you know like I said the DevOps stuff has
been going on people are pretty mature you know we can we can release we can do all that
but there's that again that missing bit and i think that's that's the challenge that's
what i'm seeing is that putting that piece in place where people are actually working
together and sharing the risk and the reward is is something that's pretty rare and it's
something we can help with.
[Brenton] Well, I for one, am very grateful of what you do.
You go out there and you educate people about APIs.
It's often hard to get really good solid information about the complete journey that enterprises
need to take to create a successful API platform for their business and I do think it's crucial
to have everyone, from the developer to the CEO understand how important APIs are to business
and how critical they are to everything that we do.
Whether it's banking, commerce, manufacturing, entertainment, and more!
So many people I talk to want to know more and they're committed to doing the right thing
but what "right" is can be very confusing when you have to start researching it.
Again very appreciative for what you and others do to educate and equip all of us to create
successful API products that produce business value because in the end, that's what it's
all about: creating business value for our enterprises.
I've seen a lot of the great resources that you've created including blogs and videos
and so where would you tell people to go to learn more about API First and other API topics?
[Brian] Well, I would go, first first and foremost obviously, because we're biased.
But goto catalyst.axway.com because that's where all of our catalyst material is.
You know we like to think of ourselves (and i thank you for your comments it's really
kind of you) We are a thought leadership team and in that sense, you know like you said,
a lot of organizations are looking to be educated but then very quickly you need to move into:
How do we execute it?
How do we do it right?
So there's a lot of stuff available on the catalyst section of the Axway website at catalyst.axway.com.
We also have a series of webinars we called "Around the Corner", which we did during the
depths of the pandemic and so there's a lot of information available there about KPIs,
about data ecosystems, about building a successful API program.
Loads and loads of really good stuff there available.
There's also the maturity assessment that talked about.
That's a good place to start.
I'd also look to all of the good work that's been done by some of the conferences that
you and I have attended in the past together and I miss that.
I missed hanging out with you with you at those.
You know, things like API Days is a great set of events around the world.
I would look to those types of things to get more information and to kind of interact,
you know, as more of a community around APIs.
[Brenton] Well, there's a lot of great content in those sites that you mentioned and I will
be sure to include all those links in the show notes for this video.
Thank you Brian!
It has been a pleasure having you on this show and i've learned a lot and I'm glad that
we're able to share this with everyone!
[Brian] Me too!
Thanks for having me, Brenton!
Good to see you!
[Brenton] I'm Brenton House.
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