Adopting new platforms like GraphQL can be both exciting and challenging. Success doesn’t come merely from implementing the technology but from understanding the organizational dynamics that facilitate its adoption. I’m Leah Hurwitz Adler from Apollo GraphQL, and I’m here to share with you the secrets to GraphQL success—from inception to general availability. These insights are hard-earned learnings from previous experiences across multiple tech transformations. While I apply them to a GraphQL platform journey, I hope you can leverage them for other transformations you may lead as well.
Defining Success: Measurable and Perceived Value
Before diving into the keys to success, it’s essential to define what success looks like. Dr. Brené Brown, a renowned sociologist, said, “We love to believe we are rational thinking people who, on occasion, feel some emotion. Everything we know about who we are as people, neurobiologically points to one thing, and that is we are emotional feeling beings who, on occasion, think.”
Platforms are long-term investments. While it’s crucial to deliver measurable value—such as reducing operational costs or improving business outcomes—you often need to garner support before these results materialize. Therefore, it’s vital to focus on both perceived value and measurable value throughout your journey.
- Perceived Value: How people feel about the graph and the value it creates for them. Does it make their jobs easier? Does it solve real-life problems? Does it help them perform better?
- Measurable Value: Tangible benefits like reduced costs, improved performance, increased stability, and better results for the products and services supported by the graph.
Understanding your organization’s needs will help you balance these two types of value effectively.
The Four Keys to Driving Successful Graph Adoption
- Know Your Users
Understanding your users’ pain points enables you to prioritize work that addresses their most pressing issues. Craft messaging that resonates with them by speaking directly to their challenges. Platforms should make people’s jobs easier and solve real problems they face daily. - Garner Senior Support
Senior leadership support is crucial for prioritizing graph adoption and allocating resources. Don’t hesitate to aim high when engaging leadership. In tech organizations, it’s essential that heads of different departments believe that GraphQL can solve their problems. Understand the concerns of management and leadership teams to reduce friction and foster tighter partnerships. - Set Clear Expectations
Clear communication prevents misunderstandings. Make sure you articulate what you expect from your users and what they can expect from the platform. A strong platform that falls short of expectations can generate less perceived value than a less robust platform that exceeds expectations. Aligning expectations is key to delivering perceived value. - Be Patient
Change takes time. Recognize that it requires effort to help people learn and see things differently. Patience allows you to see the journey through, accommodating learning curves and gradual adoption.
A Real-World Example: Wayfair’s GraphQL Journey
To illustrate these principles, let’s look at my experience at Wayfair—a leading home goods retailer and Fortune 500 company. At the time of our GraphQL adoption, Wayfair had over 2,000 engineers working on websites and native apps serving hundreds of millions of daily visitors across multiple geographies.
Defining the Starting Point
Our GraphQL Federation journey began with a clear and urgent need to update our tech stack and best practices. Despite interest in GraphQL, there wasn’t much expertise. Many applications didn’t leverage GraphQL-specific compositional architecture or caching strategies. APIs often mirrored backend data models, negatively impacting performance and leaving many skeptical about GraphQL’s value.
Leadership was concerned about developer velocity. Operating within a large PHP monolith, we hit a ceiling on productivity—hiring more engineers didn’t help. We needed to fundamentally change how we built software to scale the business. The CTO mandated a move to a microservices-based architecture, and we saw Federation as a solution.
Designing with Customers to Create Greater Buy-In
Before securing dedicated resources, we needed to validate that Federation would work and meet organizational needs. We formed two tiger teams:
- Gateway Implementation Team: Individual contributors from various areas tasked with building an initial gateway.
- Architecture Team: Senior architects from diverse organizations defining the ideal graph architecture.
By involving future contributors, we ensured the proposed solution would work across different teams.
Gaining leadership support required setting clear expectations. We emphasized that implementing Federation would require a cultural shift and a non-trivial upfront investment in learning best practices. This transparency helped us secure the necessary buy-in.
Investing in Community to Expedite Platform Rollout
Demonstrating the graph’s capabilities and articulating its limitations paid off. We received funding to create a GraphQL platform team and invested in building a graph ecosystem with foundational platform components, developer tooling, and community touchpoints.
Our primary customers during this phase were select pilot teams. We worked closely with them to deliver business outcomes, demonstrating the platform’s value through significant wins. Regular updates to leadership ensured ongoing support and expanded our network.
We set clear expectations with pilot teams: we would contribute to their outcomes, and in return, they would provide valuable feedback, contribute to the platform, and become subject matter experts. Many pilot team members became critical to our governance strategy, ensuring we delivered a performant graph across the organization.
Leveraging the Expanding User Base to Prioritize Needs
As we built out tools and felt ready, we launched a generally available, unified supergraph. While this unlocked greater value, it also meant we had less direct control over contributions. We relied on Slack channels, office hours, and feedback from governance bodies to understand community progress and prioritize needs.
We continued to inform leadership of graph adoption and positive business outcomes, demonstrating the team’s value. Empowering users while maintaining an opinionated platform allowed us to grow responsibly. Investing in tooling like linting pipelines and maintaining best practices through governance programs ensured consistent quality.
Building a Federated Graph Is Not a Linear Process
The results were significant. After two years, the federated router handled 220 million daily requests across over 80 subgraphs with high performance. However, the journey wasn’t linear. We faced ups and downs, requiring continuous iteration and a long-term perspective.
We learned that patience was essential. For example, it took four different proposals over a year to align on graph governance. It became clear that people sometimes needed to experience issues firsthand to appreciate the solutions we proposed.
Building Momentum by Converting Skeptics into Enthusiasts
An effective framework we used was the “stakeholder squares,” mapping stakeholders based on their interests and proficiency:
- Skeptical Novices: Limited attention span; focus on the “why” to convert them into believers.
- Enthusiastic Novices: Eager to learn; spend time on best practices to develop them into subject matter experts.
- Enthusiastic Experts: Powerful advocates; their passion helps influence others.
- Skeptical Experts: Hardest to convince; focus selectively if they hold strategic positions.
By tailoring our messaging and focusing on building enthusiasm, we converted skeptics into advocates, expanding support across the organization.
Your Organization Is Key to Perceived and Measurable Success
By understanding our users, engaging leaders, setting clear expectations, and being patient, we delivered both perceived and measurable success. Our journey shows that successful GraphQL adoption isn’t just about the technology—it’s about the people, culture, and collective effort.
I hope that this article has given you insights into how you can apply these methods to your own transformation. Whether it’s GraphQL or another platform, focusing on these principles will help you deliver success in your journey.
