Chapter 1. The Challenge of API Management
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet
Henry Mintzberg
A survey from Coleman Parkes released in 2017 shows that almost 9 in 10 global enterprises have some form of API program. This same survey shows that these companies are seeing a wide variety of benefits from their API programs, including an average increase in speed-to-market of around 18%. However, only about 50% of these same companies say they have an advanced API management program. This points to a key gap in many enterprise-level API programs: the distance between the operational APIs that represent key contributions to revenue and the management skills and infrastructure needed to support these revenue-producing APIs. It is this gap that this book hopes to address.
The good news is there are many companies out there successfully managing their API programs. The not-so-good news is that their experience and expertise is not easily shared or commonly available. There are several reasons for this. Most of the time, organizations that are doing well in their API management programs are simply too busy to share their experiences with others. In a few cases, we’ve talked to companies that are very careful about how much of their API management expertise they share with the outside world; they are convinced API skills are a competitive advantage and are slow to make their findings public. Finally, even when companies share their experience at public ...
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