API Lifecycle Management

What Is Your API Development Workflow?

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I am going to invest in a new way to tell stories here on API Evangelist—we will see if I can make this stick. I enjoy doing podcasts but I am not good at the scheduling and reliable repetition many expect of a podcast. Getting people to join me on a podcast takes a lot of work (I know from experience) to do reliably. People usually want to talk, but finding slots in both of our schedules and getting them to jump online and successfully record an episode isn’t easy to do on a regular basis. However, I still want to be able to craft audio narratives around specific topics that are relevant to the API sector, while also allowing many different voices to chime in. So I’ve come up with a formula I want to test and and see if I can build some momentum.

To help stimulate the API conversation and bring in other voices I want to pose a single question on a regular basis and solicit audio responses from folks across the API space, then compile the results into a single podcast that I will publish on the blog and via other channels. All folks need to do in their response to one of my questions is open up their phone and record their response and send me the resulting audio file via email, DM, or carrier pigeon. Then I will organize all the responses into a single coherent podcast with me opening, asking my questions, then chaining together the responses, and closing up with a little analysis. Make sense? A kind of an asynchronous podcast conversation amongst several participants.

Ok, let’s start with my first question.:

How do you develop APIs? Describe how you or your team actually develops an API. What is the workflow for how you go from idea to production, and what tools and services are involved. Be honest. I am not looking for fluff or pie in the sky visions of should be. I am looking for real world examples of how people do what they do on a daily basis. Try to keep the responses to five minutes or less, but I will make exceptions if your responses are really good. Don’t worry about all the nitty gritty details, I am just looking for an overview of your approach.

That is it. Grab your cell phone and record your answer. Do not worry about providing a perfectly crafted response, just make it a natural one. Try to leave some empty space at the beginning and ending of your recording, and make sure and breathe in between sentences a bit. Then go ahead and send the resulting audio to me via email (info@apievangelist.com), DM (@apievangelist), or whatever channel works. Then I am going to compile into a single podcast and publish after I get enough responses from folks, sharing here on the blog and via my social media channels.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this whole approach too. It is just a proof of concept at this point, and it doesn’t even really have a title or any other details. I’m just kicking it off to see if I can even get anyone responding and contributing. I really like listening to podcasts as I work, and I’d love to create a regular stream of consciousness from across the API community on a variety of subjects. We’ll see if we can make this work. I’ve seen a number of amazing API podcasts (I miss Traffic and Weather) come and go over the years, and this is my attempt at rebooting the concept and seeing what magic I can make happen. If I can’t, no worries, I am always just trying to experiment and see what works.

This article originally appeared here.

Kin Lane
Kin Lane is a writer, storyteller, and recovering technologists. Kin is the Chief Evangelist at Postman, and is helping share the story of how Postman is the next generation of API development environment (ADE), while also continuing to tell API stories on API Evangelist about what is happening across the API sector.

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