Planning Your API Strategy for 2018: Tools and Resources to Set Your Team Up for Success

SwaggerHub was created to help teams rethink the way they deliver APIs.

More than 70,000 API developers, designers, technical writers, and product managers got started with SwaggerHub in 2017. In that time, we’ve learned a lot about what it takes for API teams to design, document, and deliver APIs at scale.

We’ve also learned a lot about the challenges organizations face when working across multiple teams on hundreds of APIs.

Challenges like:

• How do you ensure everyone involved has visibility into changes to the API?
• How do you update and version your APIs, while ensuring your documentation stays up-to-date?
• How do you ensure consistency in your API design and enforce standards for how APIs are built?
• How do you evolve your design process and adopt new standards like OpenAPI 3.0?

This year, we released several new tools and resources to help address these and other challenges facing API teams. We’ve also reached out to industry leaders and innovators in the API space to get their perspective on what it takes to deliver great APIs. As we look ahead to 2018, we wanted to share some of our best resources and provide a recap of new SwaggerHub capabilities to set your team up for success in the new year. 

Tools for Teams to Deliver Great APIs

We kicked off 2017 with the release of three new features, designed to help teams better manage their API design and documentation workflow: Style Validator to set and enforce API style guidelines, Compare & Merge to review and merge design changes, and Projects for organizing APIs within teams.

• Introducing Style Validator to Ensure API Design Compliance
• Introducing Projects: A Better Way to Organize Your APIs in SwaggerHub
• Improve Your API Documentation Workflow with Compare & Merge in SwaggerHub

We also released new integrations with two of the leading API gateways: Apigee and IBM API Connect.

• Introducing the New SwaggerHub Apigee Integration
• Introducing the IBM API Connect Integration to Directly Deploy APIs from SwaggerHub

To close out 2017, we added initial support for designing and documenting APIs with the latest version of the OpenAPI Specfication, OpenAPI 3.0.

• Announcing OpenAPI Specification 3.0 Support for Building Great APIs

Planning Your API Strategy

In 2017, we continued to see a growing trend of organizations adopting product management principles for delivering APIs, and acknowledging the business opportunity of the modern “API economy”. We also saw a growing need for teams to have a strategy that addresses the entire lifecycle of an API from planning and design, to documentation, testing, and deployment.

Here are some of our top resources for planning your API strategy:

• API Business Models for the Modern API Economy 
• Microservices, APIs, and Swagger: How They Fit Together
• [Free eBook Download] How to Optimize Your Swagger Workflow for Today’s API Economy
• What is API Lifecycle Management?  
• What Organizations Need to Know When Deprecating APIs

Insights from the API Industry

Throughout this year we’ve had the chance to reach out to experts from all areas of the world of APIs, to get their perspective on a wide range of topics from API design, collaboration, to how some of the world’s best API teams have implemented successful API strategies.

Check out our most popular interviews below:

• API Design Guidelines: Lessons from the API Handyman
• API Culture, Collaboration, and Marketing with Jennifer Riggins
• How Bonotel Improved Collaboration and Accelerated API Delivery By Switching to SwaggerHub
• Insights into the Success of the Microsoft Graph API with Principal API Architect, Gareth Jones
• The State of The OpenAPI Specification: A Conversation with Darrel Miller, OAI TSC

Planning and Scaling Your API Design Process

The growing popularity of description formats like OpenAPI (formerly Swagger), has led to an increased focus on the “design first” approach to API development. And as a result, organizations are investing more time and effort into standardizing their API design process and setting requirements for how APIs are designed.

Learn how to standardize and scale your design process with these resources:

• Design First or Code First: What’s the Best Approach to API Development?
• API Design and Microservices: Insights from Conversations with 500 API Developers
• Will Your API Design Process Scale?
• Scaling Your API Design: How to Improve Usability and Maximize Developer Productivity When Designing APIs [Video]
• The Importance of Standardized API Design

Improve API Developer Experience with API Documentation

API documentation is one of the biggest use cases for teams working with OpenAPI, and is one of the primary reasons tools like Swagger UI have become so popular. Good documentation can help increase user adoption, reduce support inquiries, and result in a better experience for the people working with your APIs.

This year, we released a number of resources to help both beginners and experienced API teams document their APIs.

• What is API Documentation, and Why It Matters?
• API Documentation: The Secret to a Great API Developer Experience
• API Documentation Beyond the Basic Swagger UI
• Best Practices in API Documentation

Getting Started with OpenAPI 3.0

The OpenAPI Initiative, which is the group that fosters the development of the OpenAPI Specification, officially released the latest version of the specification in July 2017. OpenAPI 3.0 is the next evolution of the Swagger specification, and in addition to formerly getting a new name, also comes with improvements and new features to help teams leverage the specification throughout the lifecycle of their APIs.

Since the release, we’ve hosted three trainings and released a number of new resources and documentation for getting started:

• Announcing the Official Release of OpenAPI 3.0
• Tutorial: Learning the New OpenAPI Specification
• OpenAPI 3.0, And What It Means for the Future of Swagger [Recorded Webinar]
• OpenAPI 3.0: How to Design and Document APIs with the Latest OpenAPI Specification [Recorded Webinar]
• What Is the Difference Between Swagger and OpenAPI?

What API topics would you like to learn more about in 2018? Share your questions in the comments below.