foreword

APIs are a journey for any company, organization, institution, or government agency learning to properly manage their digital resources across an ever expanding and evolving competitive digital landscape. This digital transformation that has been building over the last five years is beginning to result in a shift across the API landscape, where companies are beginning to stop asking if they should be doing APIs and have begun seeking more knowledge on how to do APIs properly. Organizations are realizing that there’s more to APIs than just creating them; it’s everything that goes into delivering APIs throughout the entire API lifecycle. The API Academy authors behind Continuous API Management possess a unique understanding of what it takes to move an API from ideation to realization, consistently, at scale, and in a repeatable way—providing the makings for a pretty unique learning opportunity.

Most API practitioners operate with a view of the API landscape spanning a single set of APIs. Medjaoui, Wilde, Mitra, and Amundsen possess a unique view of the API landscape at a 250K-foot level, spanning thousands of APIs, multiple industries, and at scale across some of the largest enterprise organizations out there today. I can count the top-tier API talent that exists around the globe on both my hands, and Medjaoui, Wilde, Mitra, and Amundsen are always first to be counted on my right hand. These authors bring a wealth of experience to the table when it comes to understanding what you need to move APIs from inception to design, from development to production, and back again. There just isn’t another team of API experts out there who have the scope and the breadth of API knowledge that this team possesses, making this destined to become that tattered O’Reilly book that lives within reach on the corner of your desk—something you read again and again.

I’ve read numerous books on the technical aspects of creating APIs; books about Hypermedia and everything you need to know about REST, and how to deliver on this vision in a variety of programming languages and platforms. This is the first API book that I’ve read that holistically approaches the delivery of APIs from start to finish, addressing not only the technological details but also the critical business elements of operating APIs—which also includes the critical human side of API education, realization, and activation across large enterprise organizations. The book methodically lays out the essential building blocks any enterprise API architect will need to deliver reliable, secure, and consistent APIs at scale; it will help any API team quantify their operations and think more critically about how APIs can be improved upon and evolved, while also establishing and refining a structured yet agile approach to delivering APIs in a standardized way across teams.

After putting down this book, I felt I had a refreshed look at the modern API lifecycle—but more importantly, I was left with a wealth of ideas about how I actually quantify and measure my API operations, and the API lifecycle strategy I am using to manage my operations. Even with my knowledge of the space, this book forced me to look at the landscape in some important new ways. I walked away saturated with information that reenforced somewhat I already knew, but also shifted and moved around some of what I thought I knew, forcing me to evolve in some of my existing practices. For me, this is what the API journey is all about: continually being challenged, learning, planning, executing, measuring, and repeating until you find the desired results. Continuous API Management reflects this reality of delivering APIs, providing us with a reusable guide to the technology, business, and politics of doing APIs at scale within the enterprise.

Don’t just read this book once. Read it, then go out and execute on your vision. Evolve your API strategy, and define a version of the API lifecycle that is all your own, taking what you’ve learned from Medjaoui, Wilde, Mitra, and Amundsen and putting it to work. However, every once in a while, pick this book up again and give it another read. I guarantee there will be little nuggets throughout the book that you’ll rediscover and see in a new light each time you work through it; something that will build and improve your understanding of what is happening across the API landscape, and help you more confidently participate (or lead) when it comes to doing business with APIs across the expanding online economy.

Kin Lane, The API Evangelist