This document summarizes the journey of establishing an API Community of Practice (CoP) within a 125-year-old insurance company with over 1,500 employees. It describes how in 2015 they discovered issues with their APIs being duplicated across teams without consistency or respect for HTTP standards. This led to the creation of API guidelines in 2016 and organizing the developers into a CoP in 2017 to socialize the guidelines. It discusses challenges of gaining adoption across different roles and maintaining motivation over time. In the end, it provides positive results of their efforts including guidelines, API design reviews, CoP meetings held, APIs following guidelines, and members in the CoP.

1. Image Source: https://www.growtrains.com/
The (really) long journey to an
API Community of Practice
in a 125 years old insurance company

2. @duvaneljulien
Julien Duvanel
Hi, this is us.
@jerome-freyre
Jérome Freyre

3. Here we work

4. 1500 employees

5. 125 years old

6. Our IT 40+ years ago
Image Source: Vaudoise archives

7. With that many people
Image Source: Vaudoise archives

8. And today's OrgChart

9. Half of the IT has been hired after 2015

10. Average employee senority : 11+ years

11. October 2015
We discover how APIs looks like here at Vaudoise
Image Source:https://psmag.com/

12. Houston, we have problems.

13. Team B
API B API C
Same data, multiples sources.
Data
Team A
API A
Copy#2 of
Data
Copy of
copy# of
Data
Copy of
copy of
copy …
Copy of Data
Team
D
Team
ETeam
F
Team C

14. And it's getting worse… and worse…
Data
Team
A
API A
Team
B
API B
Copy of
Data
Team
C
API C
Copy#2 of
Data
Team
D
API D
Copy of
copy# of
Data
Team
E
API E
Copy of
copy of
copy …
Team
F
API F
In our case, duplicated 14 times !
API C'

16. Our APIs were ...
• Duplicated for each consumer
• Hard to consume – what the hell is that signature !?
• No consistency
• No respect of http basics (HTTP 200 KO)

17. December 2016
From not-so-good APIs to API Guidelines

19. ✓ API Guidelines
Problem solved.
But it's not over yet… ;)

20. February 2017
From anarchy to an organised group of people

22. Organised
group of
people
Common
interest
Specific
technical
domain
Share
information
Improve their
skills
Autonomy

24. Day to day of an API CoP ?
• People eager to learn more about APIs
• Meetings (guidelines, questions, etc.)
• Transparency
• Open-minded
• Leaders and a lot of energy

25. ✓ Organisation
Problem solved.
But it's not over yet… ;)

26. September 2017
From no-one-is-interested to adoption

27. Technology Adoption Curve by Everett Rogers

28. IT Managers
Product Owners Developers

29. IT Managers
• Freedom to technical leaders.
• Legitimacy.
• Support your teams. It's a long
journey.

30. Product Owners
• .
• Guidelines give structure.
• Talk about it. All – the – time.

31. • Communicate
• A lot
• Everywhere
• Formally. Informally.
• Training (optional and mandatory)
• Organise fun events
• API Breakfast
• Advent calendar
• API maze - https://bit.ly/33ff7ez
Developers
Did we mention to communicate a lot ?

32. 15
8
IT Managers
Product Owners
Devs
80

33. ✓ Adoption
✓ Legitimacy
Problems solved.
But it's not over yet… ;)

34. It's not that easy.
• Bottom-Up approach
• Natural leaders for day2day of the CoP
• You need sherrifs – #management #helpus #please
• Spread the word
• Motivation decreases overtime
• Do not forget why you do it and make sure people know it

35. Problem will never be solved.
… and we are not going to give up !

36. Still, we are happy that.
1.1
Version of our API Guidelines
47+
APIs Design Review
before implementation
20+
CoP meetings
30+
APIs that respect our guidelines
33
Members to our CoP
15
Guidelines contributors

37. Thank you for your attention.
Please, come and talk to us.

38. Give us your feedback
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