---
published: true
layout: post
title: Valuable API Cycles Are Spent Other Tooling
tags:
  - Governance
  - Distractions
  - Automation
image: >-
  https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/algorotoscope-master/dark-dali-fixing-satellite-1.jpeg
---
When you work within the enterprise reaching out to other teams for alignment around API governance policies and rules, you tend to encounter a lot of pushback and redirection from teams who see you as being in the way of what they are trying to accomplish. In technology, rather than taking the time to learn something new and just slow down a little bit to understand API goverance, teams often choose to perfect the art of deflection and redirection using whatever they have in their toolbox, with one of the most common tools irconically being about “other tooling” of the API policies and rules on the table in some of the following ways.

- **Protocols & Patterns** - Suggesting that maybe another protocol or pattern is in need of governance too, widening the governance effort.
- **Business Tooling** - The tooling you are using is more for an engineering audience and we should move it to reach a business audience.
- **Specific Tooling** - The tool you have chosen to define governance and direct this conversation is the wrong tool and we should move it.
- **Automation** - This work is best spent being automated because nobody wants to do it, making it a candidate for unknown automation.

Teams have the protocols, patterns, and tooling they are comfortable with, so it makes sense for groups to want to use what they know. However, it is a common practice for API governance work to get migrated to the new tooling so that it can be ignored or abandoned there, or having another group coming in suggesting it be moved “over there” to make more sense to “that” audience. Moving the goalposts or entire field, or widening the playing field to be too large, are all common ways to remove momentum, deflect from the task at hand, and render API governance ineffective because it isn’t doing the job it set out to do, with too many valuable cycles spend “other tooling”.