apidays New York 2023 APIs for Embedded Business Models: Finance, Healthcare, Retail, and Media May 16 & 17, 2023 Governance Doesn't Have to be a Dirty Word Jason Harmon, CTO at Stoplight ------ Check out our conferences at https://www.apidays.global/ Do you want to sponsor or talk at one of our conferences? https://apidays.typeform.com/to/ILJeAaV8 Learn more on APIscene, the global media made by the community for the community: https://www.apiscene.io Explore the API ecosystem with the API Landscape: https://apilandscape.apiscene.io/

1. Governance Doesn’t
Have to Be a Dirty Word
Jason Harmon, CTO of Stoplight

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Jason Harmon
Chief Technology Officer, Stoplight
Engineering, Product, Security, IT
Host of #APIIntersection Podcast
Background:
● Previously:
→ Senior Director of Platform Architecture @Expedia Group
→ Chief Platform Officer and CTO at @Typeform
→ Head of API Design @Paypal
→ API Architect @uShip
● Co-founded Austin API Meetup
● Founding member of OpenAPI Initiative (inactive)
● Founding member of RAML Working Group (inactive)

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Ghosts of SOAP/SOA Governance
Past — 2010 & Onwards
● Tedious and Time Consuming:
Review committees & program
management from my time at a large old
enterprise
● SOAP: (Simple object access protocol)
official protocol developed by Microsoft
as 1.0/1.1, later amended by IBM as 1.2.
Industry-wide practices determined by
the largest players

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The SOAP Era
● “Centralized-Control”
● Large, Slow, Controlling
● Industry Consortium
● Power structure entrenched
● Top-down Approach
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…versus The Open
Source Approach
● SOAP standard vs REST architectural
pattern
(and other modern API standards)
● Typically a few committers and a
community of people around them
providing input, feedback, and contribution
● Compare that model of early 2000s web
service governance, vastly different!
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Governance has changed,
but we don’t always look
at it as “governance” today.

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Today: Decentralized Governance
and the “Federated Approach”
Community
of passionate
and informed
people
Building
APIs in a
platform
ecosystem
Core team
comprised of
silo-breakers
“Wanted
Influence”

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Consider the inner
source as your
culture-change agent.
● How are you contributing
between organizations?
● How are you conducting reviews?
● Do they have the right permissions?

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This enables
platform -thinking.

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So, what does
that mean for
governance
today?

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APIs as Products
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The Rise of the API
Product Manager Era
● An ever-changing role
● Not-necessarily-technical
● Broader sense of inclusion
● APIs are business critical assets
● Partnership capability
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Treating APIs as a Product
Recognize
Relationships
Gain Business
Buy-In Enhance Your
Acceptance Criteria

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If you don’t treat
your APIs as products…
It becomes just a commodity.
A tech artifact.
You end up with an engineered design experience
instead of designing for the end-user.
This is system-centric, not customer-centric.

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Evolving Review
Processes
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“
SOAP era: principal engineers can wield the
power unchecked
Modern era: end product of the API, an
intentional design, distributed authority
If using a suite of APIs that fits cohesively
together, there is a design effort put behind it.
Governance makes it possible.

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The New Review Process
● More inclusive
● Contributors, curators, maintainers & non-technical
stakeholders
● Building for an ecosystem
● This leads to:
→ Better developer experience
→ Happier customers
→ Satisfied partners
→ Increased Scalability

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Key Takeaways
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Key Takeaways: Today’s
“Governance” Means:
● Decentralized Control; distribute power
● Maintain intentional consistency; small
centralized team
● APIs as a product; more inclusive product
development process
● Greater Transparency; educate & evangelize

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Tools to Help Improve
Your Governance Efforts
● Style Guidelines
→ Standardization of naming conventions
● Collaboration Tools to smooth out
the design review process
● Shared Components/ Model Libraries
● A solid API Product Manager!
●
Psst! If you use
Stoplight Platform,
you can get all of
these things and
more!

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For more tips
and tricks on the
API space…

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Check out Stoplight’s
API Intersection Podcast
The podcast on the intersection between
API design and digital transformation.
Available Wherever You Listen to Podcasts

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Questions?