In this article, we will explore the stages of API program maturity, discuss the key areas to measure for API program maturity, and provide you with a framework to assess your API program maturity across your organization. We will also delve into how you can continually track and enhance the maturity of your API program, offering real-time insights and automated solutions. Let's dig in to ensure the health and success of your API program.

How does an API program mature?

An API program matures through continuous improvement, which involves regular evaluation, feedback, and iteration. Here's a high-level look at the stages of API program maturity:

Ad Hoc Stage: APIs are created as needed without a clear strategy or design guidelines. There is little to no documentation, and APIs may lack security measures. In most cases, APIs are not easily discovered and likely have limited security reviews performed. 

Managed Stage: In this phase, the organization establishes formal processes and guidelines for API development. APIs may be managed using an API management platform, and basic monitoring and analytics may be in place. An API catalog may have been established to centralize the discovery of APIs. 

Standardized Stage: APIs are developed according to well-defined standards and guidelines. There is comprehensive documentation, and APIs are designed with usability and consistency. Security is a priority, and there are processes for versioning and deployment. Data is used to inform improvements. The API catalog becomes the central location for locating and onboarding with existing APIs.

Optimized Stage: The API program is fully integrated into the organization's strategy in this mature stage. APIs are designed for reusability, which promotes efficiency and innovation. There is a strong focus on user experience, with comprehensive support and resources for developers. The organization uses advanced analytics to track performance metrics, and data drives continuous improvement. The organization has shifted from build first to consume first approach to development. 

Innovative Stage: In this ultimate stage of maturity, the organization is creating APIs and innovating with them. APIs may enable new business models or revenue streams through API products or an API marketplace. The organization is a leader in API best practices and contributes to the broader API community. Product managers take center stage in identifying market needs and leveraging the organization's robust APIs to deliver solutions that quickly respond to market demand.

Remember, the path to API maturity is not necessarily linear, and organizations may be at different stages for different aspects of their API program. The key is to regularly assess your program's maturity and make a conscious effort to improve.

Five areas to measure for API program maturity

Defining API maturity typically involves the following key areas and questions for consideration:

Design Maturity: This involves assessing how well the API has been designed, taking into consideration factors such as:

•      Consistency: Is the API consistently designed, adhering to RESTful principles or 

                                        GraphQL, for instance? 

•     Usability: Is it easy for developers to understand and use the API? 
•     Documentation: Is there comprehensive and up-to-date documentation available for 

                                            the API?

Runtime Maturity: This involves considering how well the API performs when in use. Key factors include:

•     Performance: Does the API perform well under load, with fast response times and minimal errors?
•     Scalability: Can the API handle increasing traffic without significantly losing performance?
•     Security: Are adequate security measures in place to protect the API and its data?

Compliance Maturity: This involves assessing whether the API complies with relevant standards and regulations, such as GDPR or HIPAA. It also includes considerations around data privacy and how user data is handled.

Deployment Velocity: This refers to how quickly and efficiently new versions of the API can be deployed. Factors to consider include:

• Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Are there processes allowing fast, automated deployments?

• Versioning: Is a clear versioning strategy allowing updates without breaking existing implementations?

Reliability Metrics: This involves looking at how reliable the API is. Key metrics to consider include:

•     Uptime: What percentage of the time is the API available and functioning correctly?
•     Error rates: How often do errors occur, and what types of errors are most common?
•     Recovery time: How quickly can the API recover from a failure or error?

Remember, the maturity of an API isn't a fixed state—it's a continuous journey. An API's maturity can and should evolve over time as technologies, standards, and user expectations change. This requires a continuous assessment of your API program's health and maturity.

Assessing API program maturity across the organization

There are a few methods organizations use to track these metrics. The most common we have seen is through the use of manual surveys. API consumer surveys gather qualitative data about the API's consistency, documentation, ease of use, and more. Likewise, API producers are often asked to fill out a spreadsheet with details about their API, including the elements of standards and practices currently implemented. These surveys are usually conducted on-demand or quarterly. Responses are reviewed, and improvements are introduced. However, sometimes responses could be more sparse, resulting in an incomplete picture of the API program's maturity. 

While API style guides are often used to assess an API's design compliance, these details are rarely aggregated and reported upon beyond a single API. An API Center for Enablement (C4E) is often tasked with managing the linter rules, including oversight of a developer team that writes custom linting rules. The linting reports are used before a manual design review. However, the API program's overall maturity is rarely tracked regarding design compliance. 

Read:

The Power of Collaboration in API Governance

As discussed in a previous article, API governance often requires a hybrid governance model until all teams can align with the organization's API standards and practices. In some cases, linters are not used by some teams as they cannot comply with design guidelines until the next major version of the API. Manual surveys may provide insight regarding compliance during this transition period, but delays and sparse responses will only provide a partial picture of API program maturity. 

Automated tools, such as API management platforms and log analyzers, are frequently used to monitor the runtime behavior of an API. Metrics such as response times, error rates, and uptime are used to determine the health of an API. They are also used to track APIs that exceed their SLAs for partners and customers, providing insights into reliability. 

Finally, CI/CD pipelines help to automate API releases but are rarely incorporated into the API program's health tracking. This results in limited insight into how often an API is being updated. When deployments are integrated into an API program's maturity, it helps to demonstrate active APIs, and correlate increased error rates with recent deployments. 

Tracking your API program maturity

As you may have noticed, many of these elements require manual monitoring. This results in many organizations failing to monitor the health and maturity of their API program. At best, the insights are delayed and likely fail to represent the complete state of the program due to sparse responses by API consumers and producer teams. 

Your organization must leverage automation to gather the necessary details to continually monitor and improve your API program. Through a series of reporting dashboards, your executives, API C4E, and developers can quickly visualize the health of the API program. API-producing teams can immediately see the positive impact they are making as they align with API standards and practices through the continuous deployment of improvements. 

Watch:

APIwiz 101 - Shift Left API Linting

Reports should include design time governance to track API standards and practices adoption. By shifting left the linting process into the earliest stages of the design process, API producer teams can quickly assess and correct design non-compliance. When collected across the organization's API surface area, these metrics will provide insights into the number of teams migrating toward API design standards. No more manual surveys or guessing how many teams have adopted your API standards. When combined with compliance reports, the organization has a complete picture of design time and regulatory compliance insights. 

APIwiz offers this shift-left linting support, linting rules that can be applied globally and on a per-team basis, and reporting of APIs in compliance with your linting rules:

While most organizations generate reports about specific API runtime and reliability details from their API management platform logs, these are only sometimes incorporated into a roll-up report across the organization. APIwiz can do this for you, ensuring that API owners can visualize their runtime metrics while executives can see the overall health of the API program at runtime:

Finally, deployment velocity details should be visualized for each API. This will provide insight into APIs that are actively being improved or may be abandoned due to a lack of attention by the owning team. APIwiz works with a variety of CI/CD pipelines out-of-the-box to ensure reporting of each delivery is captured as part of the API program health:

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