1.
Practical API
Strategy with
APIOps Cycles
MARJUKKA NIINIOJA, OSAANGO
APIDAYS PARIS 2020
APIOps CyclesTM https://www.apiopscycles.com/
For lean and business-oriented API Development
Openly licensed with CC-BY-SA 4.0

2.
Marjukka Niinioja
Founding partner Osaango Oy, local organizer of apidays Helsinki
and APIOps meetups
Consulted and trained 200+ companies and public sector organiza
tions on platform economy and
API economy business models, service and product strategies and
enterprise architecture
One of the authors of API Economy 101 –
book (2019) combining research with practical experience
“Mother” of APIOps Cycles method.
Linked https://www.linkedin.com/in/marjukkaniinioja/
@mniinioja
@osaangoltd
@apiopscycles
#apieconomy101

3.
“Help us create
guidelines for our
API development”
THIS QUESTION OFTEN OPENS UP
THE PANDORA’S BOX…

4.
APIOps Cycles is all about
collaboration btw business & tech

5.
@apiopscycles Use cases - API
strategy:
 Take one business unit and one
ecosystem journey customer
segment first.
 Go through API Canvas-phase
and do around of partner and
developer experience reviews
first.

6.
Often API strategy emerges from
practical questions
“Customer
API”
guidelines
CRM
strategy
Customer
experience
strategy

7.
You can’t build an API strategy
without thinking about the
ecosystem journeys & experience
Customer journey combined from resources provided by individual providers via APIs
 Analytics and
content APIs
 Awareness APIs
 Sense APIs
 Recommending
products
 Personalized offers
 Ordering
with voice
 Fraud detection in
payments
 Optimizing routes
 Automated
maintenance calls
“The ecosystem together generates value for its end-customers by integrating functionally interdependent
subsystems. “(Source: In API Economy 101 book from Mäkinen – Dedehayir, 2013; more specifically Han,
J. et al. 2017. Uncovering the conceptual boundaries of the ecosystems: Origins, evolution and future
directions.)

8.
API ConsumerAPI Provider
• Login customer with
social logins or secure
login
• Check if customer exists
• Create customer
• Store info about
preferencies
• Join customer to loyalty
program
• Check customer
personal and contact
information from official
and external customer
registries before
purchasing
• Validate addresses
entered by customer
• Combine customers as a
household
• Inactivate customer
• Remove and transfer all
customer data (GDPR)
Gains
concrete results, benefits, positive outcome and aspirations
• Same up-to-date customer information easily in all
services
• Customer data from social media sites and official
registeries automatically but only as much as
neeeded
• Enables short conversation time and self-service in
customer information maintenance – reduced
contacts from customers
• Improved security
• Improved customer experience – better shopping
experience
• Reduced PCI audit scope
• Personalized marketing and adds (social media)
• Delivery problems - errors in customer address
information, can we store multiple addresses?
• Usability
• Reliability – data out-of-date in official or bought
registries
• Not possible to remove customer
• Privacy issues – is data stored according to EU-
regulations? Can it be removed and how easy it is
to transfer if customer wants to?
• Payment / credit card information security (PCI
DSS)
• Scalability problems during peaks (black Friday
etc)
• Add-hoc requirements from Business Units
A
Tasks
Step by step
tasks consumer
needs to
achieve
Customers
Address Validation
Login
Preferences
• Social media linking (login, posting, personal
information)
• Customer maintenance as self-service
• Alternative delivery address for gifts
• Security
• Oauth
• 2 factor authentication
• Tokenization
• Credit Card Information
• Validation (email, address, phone, etc.)
• Address validation – Use of 3rd party API
• Developer Portal
• Authentication (Oauth)
• Tokenization
• Credit Card number
• Confidential information
• Architecture
• Data privacy
• Performance
• Scalability
B
C Pains
prevents or makes it difficult to get the task done
F
API
Products
and services
D Gain Creators
Produce, incr. or max outcomes and benefits
E Pain Relievers
Eliminate, reduce or minimize pains
API
Product-
Market
Fit
API Value Proposition Canvas
Example by
@mniinioja
Journey…
How to handle
prospects?
How to handle
authenticated users?
How to handle
verified users?

9.
Key ActivitiesKey Partners
Costs
Key Resources
Name of the API
Relationships
Channels
API Consumer Segment
Revenue Streams
23
4
5
6
7
8
9
API Value Proposition
1
API Canvas
[Who will help us with the
key activities ]
[What do we need to change,
create, buy or hire to provide
the API with the value
proposition, in addition to
the existing key resources ]
[Existing technical, human,
documentation and other
resources that help provide
thae API with this value
proposition]
[Describe hear how each
stage and touch point in the
developer journey is going to
be handled]
API marketplaces
Developer center
API Management platform’s
Developer portal
[ Costs for the key activities and ongoing costs ]
External developers
creating end-user interface
for customers’
administrators
Customers’ developers
who want to update their
contacts and information
automatically
Reseller partners
Internal Developers from
other teams or business
units
Revenue share 20% from reseller partners per each new customer
created
Improved validation of customer data reduces the contact to
customer service
Improved authentication results into better reviews for service and
enables 3rd party access (ecosystems) to access the service.
Developer portal reduces support contacts when creating internal
services
Enriched customer data
maintenance as self-service with
uniqueness validation (based
on email, address, phone, etc.
Consent management (privacy)
enforced
Performance and scalability
ensured for large usage
amounts
Customer Contacts API
Example by
@mniinioja

10.
@apiopscycles use cases - API
management technology planning:
 Start with API strategy
and then use the NFR
canvases (Business
Impact, Capacity,
Locations of data and
systems.
 Give a thought on the
API design (events or
polling with requests).
What is our service
strategy? And then our
API strategy?

11.
Example from water services
ecosystem – potential target state
Energy sector Real-estate
Building
maintenance
Building
automation
Consumers
Potential customers
Construction, building management, living, wellbeing, safety etc. ecosystems
Supply planning
Supply
management
Collecting
consumption data
Invoicing
Combining data,
analyzing
Reporting
Water service
facilities
Public
authorities
Maintenance
Data hubs, API
providers, system
integr.
Potential production and service partners
Maintenance
Data analytics
and refinery
Customer
services
Self-service
Data and
API services
Quality assurance
Designing
network
Fault detection
Building
metrics

12.
What are the goals?
Business goals?
 Build an ecosystem?
 Scale business with partners?
 Grow market position?
 Go to new markets?
 Fulfill new customer needs to maintain position in
the market?
 Improve profitability?
 Improve quality?
 Fulfill policy and regulatory requirements?
Technical goals?
 Increase speed of development?
 Improve quality of development?
 Distribute development?
 Outsource development?
 Enable partner innovation?
 Prepare for new needs?
 Renew old technology?
 Security of supply (data and systems in secure
locations)

13.
What are the goals of the water
services ecosystem?
“We provide
enough and safe
utilities (?)” with
data- and API-
driven partner
ecosystem
“We provide
service, also
digitally” with
customer
portals and
apps
“We provide
water” with old
systems
2020 ->202X?<-2018
Public data and
interfaces
Private sector
partners
Public sector
partners
Security of supply
partners
Regulatory bodies

14.
Put the APIs in the right context
 Why create an API-strategy, when you can create a business strategy that
includes APIs?
 Secure the team, budget and buy-in to build or consume the right APIs
 Build partnerships so you don’t need to build everything yourself
 Build the right APIs, plugins, SDKs etc. and build them in the right way

15.
APIOps Cycles helps you to remove
the 8 wastes of Lean
APIOps
= DevOps for APIs,
but
APIOps Cycles method
= a specific method combining APIOps
+ “BizDevOps” + Product
management + Minimum Viable API
Architecture + Lean

16.
It’s all about collaboration
 If your API team looks like this –
APIOps Cycles won't help you.
 Invite who ever you need to, to
get to the real truth on what
your partner strategy and API
strategy should be, and how
APIs could be used in your
business model.

17.
Get more info
from
WWW.APIOPSCYCLES.COM
WWW.OSAANGO.ACADEMY
JOIN THE APIOPS SLACK CHANNEL TO GET
TIPS & EXTRA MATERIAL
FOLLOW @APIOPSCYCLES AND
@MNIINIOJA IN TWITTER OR IN LINKEDIN