What is API product management and what can you be doing to be a better API product manager — get aligned with SaaS and enterprise software requirements.
Let’s be friends: Comment (0) Join the DZone community and get the full member experience. As more companies realize the benefits of an API-first mindset and treating their APIs as products, there is a growing need for good API product management practices to make a company’s API strategy a reality. However, API product management is a relatively new field with little established knowledge on what is API product management and what a PM should be doing to ensure their API platform is successful. Many of the current practices of API product management have carried over from other products and platforms like web and mobile, but API products have their own unique set of challenges due to the way they are marketed and used by customers. While it would be rare for a consumer mobile app to have detailed developer docs and a developer relations team, you’ll find these items common among API product-focused companies. A second unique challenge is that APIs are very developer-centric and many times API PMs are engineers themselves. Yet, this can cause an API or developer program to lose empathy for what their customers actually want if good processes are not in place. Just because you’re an engineer, don’t assume your customers will want the same features and use cases that you want. This guide lays out what is API product management and some of the things you should be doing to be a good product manager. Before you can embark on your API product management duties, you should first understand what are the high-level objectives with your company’s API initiative. Is this API a core driver of top-line revenue such as in companies like Stripe and Twilio, or is the business goal to build an ecosystem of third-party developers to build a competitive moat and expand your market like Dropbox or Box? Developing an API for the sake of development may work as an independent study project, but will end in disaster for most companies that need to generate revenue. As an API product manager, you should be listening carefully to what your customers actually want, whether these are internal teams or external developers for a public API program. This can be especially hard for API platforms since there are many stakeholders involved. You have the individual developer deciding to adopt and use your API, but you also have the decision-maker that has final authority on whether to move forward with an enterprise agreement. You may also have end-users of the final application which you may talk with also. Your efforts as a PM would not hold any weight if there were no metrics and KPIs attached to them. Like any product management role in 2020, just shipping features based on gut feeling or a small sample of customers does not cut it anymore. Your metrics should be aligned to product goals such as engagement or retention.
