All APIs must be assessed against a maturity model that measures documentation, security, testing, monitoring, and consumer experience, providing a measurable way to track progress, compare APIs, and prioritize governance investments where they will have the greatest impact.
API Maturity Is Measured and Improved
Policies
Maturity Scoring (Governance)
Require that every API is scored against a shared maturity model that measures design, documentation, testing, security, and operational readiness, and that the score is visible to the team that ow...
Review & Approval (Governance)
Require that every API design and significant change passes through a documented review and approval step before it ships, with clear owners and clear criteria. I am a big believer in design-first ...
Governance Policies
Human and machine-readable policies that define an aspect of API operations, which are always kept in alignment with business objectives.
API Lifecycle
A human and machine-readable schema of the common and agreed upon API lifecycle.
Rules
Providing the machine-readable rules used to govern an API that can be used as part of pipelines or other automation to lint an API, making sure the baseline for each API and the operations around ...
Policies
Providing the machine-readable policies that link machine-readable rules with the business reasons why we are governing an API and the operations around it, helping organize rules based upon the bu...
Experiences
Alignment
Achieving alignment between teams producing APIs and their consumers is a persistent challenge in API operations. Effective collaboration between business and technical stakeholders requires ongoin...
Quality
The quality of HTTP APIs powering an enterprise tends to decline as the number of ungoverned APIs grows across internal, partner, and public landscapes. Low-quality APIs lead to poor downstream exp...
Consistency
Achieving consistency in the design, delivery, and maintenance of HTTP APIs across an enterprise is a significant challenge—one that often complicates API operations. Small differences, such as var...
Governance
Governance is the experience of keeping API operations consistent and aligned as they scale across teams and time. It is the discipline that connects strategy at the top to the rules being enforced...
