API Strategy for Decision Makers

Chapter 3. Making Your Strategy Observable

In this chapter, we’ll cover the terms observability and monitoring and the role they play in establishing a reliable way to “see” how developers are finding and using your API product. By collecting data on developers as they explore your API products, you can discover where you need to improve your developer experience and what features really matter to your audience, and you can uncover bugs and problems your developers are dealing with as they try to use your API.

Above all, it is important that you get in the habit of “designing in” observability and monitoring metrics when you create your API products. As Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm (HarperCollins), put it: “Without big data, you are blind and deaf and in the middle of a freeway.”

First, let’s talk about the terms observability and monitoring, and then we can explore the notion of product analytics and how you can use it to improve your API products.

What Is Observability?

Observability is a method of determining the internal condition of a system through external outputs—in other words, having the ability to “see” into a running system to determine its overall health and efficiency. Launching an online service means you are responsible for maintaining that service—keeping it up and running—in order to meet the needs of users.

The challenge of creating and maintaining any API product is that, since it is virtual, it is hard to “see” what is going on from moment ...