Digital product delivery and platform enablement (Part 3 of the enterprise API program guide)

December 14, 2022

Discover the importance of treating APIs as products and how to define KPIs, as well as key components in the platform that scaffolds them.

APIs should be treated like products. This also extends to the digital products that are built from APIs. In part 3 of the enterprise API program guide, we talk about how a successful API program can help organizations to establish essential and, often missing, product thinking and development practices when it comes to API delivery.

How to create growth: API product steps

Good API product practices extend from a rigorous understanding of business operations and the business goals that align to the organization’s digital strategy. These practices also extend to improvements in development operations to shorten the API lifecycle and enable automation and API accessibility.

Define KPIs for API products — examples of meaningful things to measure

A critical role for an API program is to assist API product teams with defining and tracking success and performance indicators for their API products. This goes far beyond simply tracking the number of APIs delivered and simple transactional metrics such as API calls.

The API program should help teams determine how the information should be sourced and explain why it needs to be done. Categories of KPIs for APIs include:

CONSUMPTION KPIs

Revenue growth

• Growth rate

• Customer acquisition

Adoption

• #API calls

• Data volume

API marketplace choice

• #Providers available

• #API searches

Percent of business on APIs

• Percent domain capabilities as APIs