Relaying the value and progress of APIs to stakeholders
Importance of APIs
API stands for application programming interface! We live in a world wherein we want different systems to be connected. 2 examples are as below - 1. Financial services - For the most part as an individual investor, I ’d like to use the company’s website (eg: Fidelity Investments) for my trading. But, if I am a power user, I would want to check all my investments together, that I have in all organizations! There are tools that integrate data of the investor from different organizations! 2. Healthcare industry - One of the most common complaints of the admin staff in different organizations is that they have to login to multiple websites to find and update information on a patient. They might use a website that in turn uses an EMR that has all the patient data they need!
What if all these users could get a seamless integrated experience wherein they login once and have efficient workflows?
Read more about the role of the API PM
What are the challenges?
Technical stakeholders - They need to align on the architecture. Developers need to explore new technologies. Organizations often come up with standards and come up with a design that solves for the business requirements. There should be a balance between exploring new technologies and just building applications that solve user needs. Unfortunately, I have seen organizations wherein the goals are to just build AI/analytics applications. We need to build APIs so that it is reusable and not build the same requirement again and again across systems! There are one set of stakeholders, who will understand the technical design and will appreciate the importance of the same. While others might need more hand-holding.
Non-technical stakeholders - Often times, it is very hard for our non-technical stakeholders to understand the value & even the progress of APIs. I have faced this many times in different industries. One way is to initially develop a sketch and align the API configuration. You can then develop a UI that invokes the endpoint and show the functionalities driven by the endpoint. Another way is if there are multiple pages that are driven the same functionality then share the wireframes with the stakeholders. Try a 1:1 or a very small group setting to explain things if they still don’t get it. It might be difficult but you gotta do it!
How do you share progress?
With the technical stakeholders, having developers run the APIs using swagger, postman, logs etc. would be helpful. They will certainly appreciate the work your team has put behind it. Similarly, developing a lean UI that accesses your API will help the non-technical stakeholders understand your progress. Lastly, if you have the resources, develop a test website, that can be accessed anytime by the stakeholders. That way, playing around with the same will help them understand what you have built.
Final Thoughts
Sharing value of APIs to your stakeholders is very important. In this world of scarce resources, we cannot duplicate efforts to build the same things. Some stakeholders may understand APIs even if they are in non-technical roles now because they might have been a developer before. But that isn’t the case with all stakeholders. But the latter category might be the one making the decisions. So, definitely engage with them.