4 Best Practices for Developing Your API Management Strategy

Are you wondering what are the benefits of complete lifecycle API Management?

Or perhaps you want to know how to achieve an API gateway? This blog highlights the best benefits of full lifecycle API. But before we dive in, first things first:

Why does API management matter?

API management allows businesses to improve and accelerate development processes simultaneously. Furthermore, API management tools enable enterprises to unlock opportunities and achieve goals faster.

Effective API management will help you develop a more digitally-enabled, data-driven organization. As your agency prepares to modernize with APIs, keep these four best practices in mind to craft a comprehensive API management strategy.

With API management tools at your disposal, it’s relatively easy for any company, regardless of size, to compete.

But before you can achieve any of the above, first, your business needs to have clear technology objectives. By that, we mean business goals that will help your agency to thrive.

Here are some of the benefits of the full lifecycle API management platform:

1. API help companies harness technology to enable good governance

Using legacy systems or data repositories to manage APIs is not the most effective approach to API governance. You’ll need more than that.

So, if you want to support your strategy, you should consider leveraging API management solutions. Along with a unified platform that facilitates complete lifecycle API management.

The API platform offers application integration, data sharing, and data management capabilities to streamline collaboration between developers, enterprise architecture, security, and operations teams involved in building, deploying, and using APIs.

2. It provides a protected API gateway.

Using legacy systems or data repositories to manage APIs isn’t the most effective approach to API governance.

To support your strategy, consider leveraging a unified platform that facilitates full lifecycle API management. This platform provides application integration, data sharing and data management capabilities to streamline collaboration between developer, enterprise architecture, security and operations teams involved in building, deploying and using APIs. It also provides a protected API gateway that aligns with internal governance and security policies to improve monitoring, access management and control.

Additionally, a unified API management platform delivers insight into application interdependencies, the organizational data APIs are using, makes it easier to catalog assets for discovery and reuse for new applications, streamlines change management processes and provides analytics that drives more informed decision-making.

So, if you are looking for an API gateway that aligns with internal governance and security policies, you should consider a full lifecycle API. It will allow you to improve monitoring, access management, and control.

3. Define roles and responsibilities

If your agency wants to enact API-led modernization, you also need to manage APIs more strategically. Developing a comprehensive API management strategy can lay the foundation for more effective API management, especially as your environment changes and you onboard new applications.

Before your organization implements APIs, take the time to identify your overarching goals, define key roles and responsibilities throughout the API lifecycle, determine how you will secure APIs and leverage a unified API management platform to enable good governance. Taking all these steps can ensure you put APIs to their highest and best use to propel your transformation.

As part of your governance strategy, you’d need to identify API owners. Then ask yourself the following question:

• Who will be responsible for managing the API gateway or unified platform?
• Who should have access to specific data sources?
• And most importantly, who is responsible for the API once it goes into production and then into service?

Want to learn a thing or two about how a unified API management platform can drive your agency’s modernization strategy? Reach out to us today!