Why You Should Prioritize Your API Strategy Before its Design

An API can be an integral part of a mobile application or service, and they aren't something you should just throw together without thinking things through, as detailed as the results could be. While the design of your API is important, it's probably best that you think about the overall strategy first. Once that has been laid out, then you can let the design of the API fill in the gaps. Thinking about the design first can lead to a lot of wasted time and resources, so as Brandon West from ProgrammableWeb believes, one should focus on the overall strategy first.

If you start working out the details of the implementation of your API before you figure out how many dependencies it will create, then you're going about it the wrong way. There are a number of tools and frameworks available to help you build an API the optimal way, so you should utilize the tools that are available for your project before you dive in head first. You should definitely start planning some things out before you even begin.

As West's article says, a few questions you should ask yourself before you begin working on the API is how things will pan out in the long run. Think about who will write the documentation, who will support it to make sure it's running, what are your plans for if/when you have to scale it up from your product or service going viral. You'll also want to plan out who will be handling the support requests from your users, how will you monitor the latency of the API and how you can educate your sales and marketing team about the advantages your API can offer.

In the long run, it's generally better to deliver a poorly designed API that is useful to your users than a well designed API that isn't offering your users as much value. As mentioned, this decrease in value can be from high latency issues, poor support, etc. So plan out your strategy before you dive in and are unable to keep things optimized and running properly!

Read the insightful thoughts of ProgrammableWeb by clicking here!

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