--- published: true layout: post title: Developing Your API Integration Strategy tags: - Integrations - Business - Pitch image: >- https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/algorotoscope-master/bf-skinner-docks-water-front.jpg --- Your company produces valuable digital resources, data, content, and algorithms that other companies find useful, adds value to their business, and are willing to pay for. You can develop web, mobile, and artificial intelligence applications for these companies to use, but increasingly these companies also want your digital resources and capabilities in the applications they already use as part of their operations. All of these applications use application programming interfaces, or simply APIs to function, and your ability to design, develop, deliver, iterate, and support APIs will define your competitiveness and overall market position. Your company’s ability to efficiently make your data, content, and algorithms available in new and existing applications and systems through integrations shapes your business, and your relationship with your customers and partners. I am here to help you assess your current capacity for integrations, map out the landscape of APIs that exist to support your operations today, and help you optimize the technical, but also the business elements that power your operations, applications, and integrations today. With a deeper awareness of the current state of APIs, I can help you make sure your data, content, and algorithms are available where they are needed, with minimal resources and friction required to introduce new applications and integrations over time. ## Technical Review I will review the current technical details of the APIs you produce, defining your existing HTTP API landscape using the open-source OpenAPI specification, and the request and response payloads using the open-source JSON Schema specification. I will take this landscape and review it for Internet and industry patterns and anti-patterns using the open-source Spectral rules format. This work will establish a baseline for how many APIs you have, how many individual API operations are available, the general shape of data being passed back and forth, and just how standardized your APIs are, and how much work lies ahead of us. With a technical review, we will have your digital resources and capabilities mapped, a list of work to be done, but also a baseline of API standardization required to deliver new digital resources and capabilities using APIs that meet the needs of your API consumers. ## Business Review I will review the current business details of the APIs you make available, defining your existing API experience using the open-source APIs.json specification. A business review will allow us to assess what it is like to onboarding with an API, evaluating documentation, authentication, and other elements of how you operate your API. I will again look for Internet and industry patterns and anti-patterns using the open-source Spectral rules format. This work will establish a baseline for how you engage with your partners and customers around your existing APIs, and how standardized these processes are within your industry, and the wider technology sector. With a business review we will have the resources and processes mapped out around your APIs, and identify what will be needed to optimize integrations with and applications of your data, content, and algorithms.

## Integrations Plan A technical and business review of your existing APIs and integrations will provide the foundation for how we can standardize and optimize across your APIs, as well as the operations and experience around them, helping streamline the integration of your data, content, and algorithms into your customer and partner systems and applications. Our shared objective is to properly define every technical detail of how your APIs work, optimize how they are delivered and iterated upon to bring down the cost of, and shorten the time-frame required to deliver new and upgrade existing integrations with your data, content, and algorithms. I will help you evaluate the integration approach used within your industry, while also bringing in standards for integration of your digital resources and capabilities into other systems and applications, helping expand the reach of your business with deeper and stickier integrations. ## Team Coordination I am here as a central point of contact for the technical and business review of your APIs. I don’t have a full understanding of the scope of your teams and APIs, but I am here to commit a dedicated number of hours a week towards mapping and reviewing the technical and business details above, and establishing a baseline for for how you can provide the APIs needed for integration into a mix of APIs for the services and platforms your customers already use. I am here to join in on the email, Slack, Teams, and issues channels used and answer questions, gather artifacts, and process existing documentation and other resources available for APIs. It is my job to bring your existing operations into focus, making them more tangible with APIs.json and OpenAPI, but then also generate up to date documentation that helps enable and guide teams forward delivering the digital resources and capabilities you need to offer.

## Digital Operations Once I complete a technical and business review of your company I will be able to better articulate where the work is governing your APIs. To illustrate how a technical and business review will lay the foundation for your integration plan, and wider API strategy—let’s explore a single integration. If an integration costs you 300K dollars or euros to produce, and increases your revenue by 3% over six months—my objective is to bring that cost down, while increasing the velocity in which new integrations can occur. Consistent technical details like parameter casing and response codes will increase the time and cost of each integration, and the absence and quality of business elements like documentation, authentication, and reporting will increase time and cost of integrations, but also lower the overall value of experience for customers. I am here to bring visibility and optimization to your digital supply chain, factory floor, and distribution channels using APIs. I will organize and communicate the outcomes of the API rules I use as part of your technical review, as well as the operational rules I use as part of your business review as part of API policies that help us align your overall API strategy and business goals. [You can see this in the wild with a review of the API for my API search engine](https://github.com/api-evangelist/search-api), an approach I am further refining to better speak to business stakeholders as part of my reviews. My API strategies, policies, rules, and supporting reviews and guidance are developed from fifteen years of helping enterprise organizations get a handle on their API operations. I know it can be hard to see your APIs right now, but with about a month's worth of work, and a robust technical and business review of your existing API operations, things will become much more visible and tangible for both of us. Integrations of your data, content, and algorithms into the applications and systems your existing and future customers need is how I can help you better define the product and engineering sides of your API strategy, and help you remain competitive in your industry.