I am regularly caught off guard by the dissonance between the speed and velocity at all cost mode of some enterprises and the lack of discovery and observability of their HTTP API infrastructure. It’s fascinating to watch folks feel like they are in some sort of leading state in the market due to their chaotic velocity instead of actually achieving any sort of meaningful state of business and pace of change. I am seeing more enterprises begin to invest in their HTTP infrastructure, but the majority of enterprises I talk with are still in a state of denial regarding the role their HTTP API infrastructure plays. This reality always leaves me recommending that enterprises not do anything new or big, and just map the APIs they currently have in the following ways.
- OpenAPI - Produce OpenAPIs for as many HTTP APIs as you can find—they don’t have to be complete, just mapping as much as you can.
- Teams - Who are the people behind the APIs, and make sure they are listed on the OpenAPIs and their stories are accounted for in work.
- Rules - Generate rules for all of the patterns already in use and the anti-patterns in use that you would like to begin to evolve beyond.
- Documentation - Make sure you have generated documentation for your APIs using OpenAPI and they are published where teams can find.
- Tooling - Produce an inventory of all the commercial services and open-source tooling in use by teams centrally or distributed across groups.
Begin there. Don’t worry about all the work still left to do. Don’t worry about OpenAPIs being 100% complete. Don’t worry about your rules being organized into some grand style guide. Just get your existing digital resources and capabilities mapped out. Start a conversation with teams about their APIs, the tools they are using, and what their processes are. Learn more about what else they need to be successful. Don’t worry about GraphQL, event-driven, gRPC, or other APIs, just focus on mapping out your HTTP API infrastructure. Don’t get distracted with new technology or projects until you get this work to a satisfactory level. I guarantee you are going to learn so much about your enterprise, its people, and the APIs already in use, you are going to come out the other side with an understanding of what is needed next.
