Liz Douglass & Saul Caganoff share their experience with problems and anti-patterns in enterprise integration and APIs. They propose a model to overcome these issues through product orientation.
1. Growing an
API Culture
“T’aint what you do…”
Liz Douglass, Partner at Deloitte Platform Engineering
@LizDouglass
Saul Caganoff, Principal & CTO at Deloitte Platform Engineering
@scaganoff
2. Agenda
Part 1: Common problems and anti-
patterns
Part 2: What does better look like?
Part 3: Growing applications into domains
4. Bottlenecks
⊷ Consumers waiting on APIs
⊷ Waiting on central integration team
⊷ Waiting on shared infrastructure
⊷ System inertia due to technical debt
4
Silos
⊷ Lots of similar APIs
⊷ No benefits from reuse
Contention
⊷ Version proliferation – APIs don’t get
retired
⊷ Version churn – APIs change rapidly
12. The problem with (only) projects
⊷ Compartmentalised scope and time
⊶ “Just need to get it done”
⊶ Sometimes this is unavoidable – but
technical debt is OK if you pay it back
⊷ Short-term incentives with no consequences
for shortcuts
⊷ More convenient to look at things as
evergreen
⊶ Easier to start from scratch than to re-
use someone else’s stuff
⊷ Projects are hampered in their ability to
promote durable, re-usable assets such as12
13. Product thinking
⊷ An antidote to some of the problems of
projects
⊷ Product thinking looks like:
⊶ A roadmap of features extending into
the future
⊶ Features driven by customer demand
⊶ The ability to push back (or say “no”)
on customer demand – e.g. to maintain
the integrity of the product
⊷ Typically manifest in a product manager
who has resources, rights and longevity to
deliver on a product roadmap
13
15. Many organisations struggle with
product thinking
⊷ 50 years of the project paradigm:
⊶ Concepts
⊶ Processes
⊶ Funding models
⊶ Organisational structure
⊷ Procurement models based around COTS
⊶ Projects commission COTS “boxes”
and join them up (integration)
⊶ Pick the product then pick an
implementation partner (system
integrator)
⊷ Attention centres on the box rather than the
business capability
15
16. Integration
becomes a thing
we “do”
16
⊷Delivered via projects
⊷Lines between boxes
⊷An obligation
⊷Inherits the problems of projects
⊶difficult to create durable, re-usable
assets
Application 1
Asset boundary
Application 2
Asset boundary
Integration
Design
Build
Run
Endpoints
Data structures
Mapping rules
17. Can we flip this
model?
17
⊷Most organisations already have durable asset
teams
⊶Centred on COTS applications
⊶Stopping at the application boundaries
⊷What if we move the APIs into those asset
boundaries?
⊷Asset teams become the durable owners of their
domain APIs
Application 1
Asset boundary
Application 2
Asset boundary
API Provider
Design
Build
Run
Endpoints
Data structures
API Consumer
Mapping rules
18. 18
⊷ Application boundaries expand to form domains
Application 1
Asset boundary
Application 2
Asset boundary
19. 19
Domain boundary Domain boundary
⊷ Application boundaries expand to form domains
⊷ Domain capabilities expressed via APIs & event
streams
20. 20
Domain boundary Domain boundary
⊷ Application boundaries expand to form domains
⊷ Domain capabilities expressed via APIs & event
streams
⊷ Core applications augmented by microservices
21. 21
Domain boundary Domain boundary Domain boundary
⊷ Application boundaries expand to form domains
⊷ Domain capabilities expressed via APIs & event
streams
⊷ Core applications augmented by microservices
⊷ Domain boundaries become a scaffold for
modernisation
24. 24
Disconnected
Projects
Sweet Spot
• Domain autonomy& durability
• Governanceat the edges
😭
🚀
HighAlignment
• Discovery
• Consistency
High Autonomy
• Durability
• Self-service
LowAutonomy
• Order-takers
Delivery Model
Governance
Model
Integration
Factory
🏭
Slide design courtesy of slidescarnival.com – licensed under Creative Commons
Notes de l'éditeur
Liz:
And then we thought about it more we decided....
Ownership and Durability are driven by the level of Autonomy that teams have,
which in turn is driven by the delivery model used.
Roadmap and visibility are driven by how different teams
achieve alignment across the broader organisation
and ultimately that comes down to your governance model