API Strategy Fundamentals: Nurture API Adoption

Supporting your digital strategy with the right technology is critically important. However, it's even more important to recognize that the technology you choose should really center around enabling your organization's business operations. Although technology alone cannot galvanize and nurture your ideal ecosystem, taking a balanced approach to your digital strategy is critical to success. Your developers and the experience you create for them will play a significant role in helping your organization get on board with API adoption. Here we'll look at how your API strategy is fundamental in nurturing API adoption throughout your organization.

Prepare to Overlap Versions

Adopting a new API strategy is no easy feat, and developing a timeline for adoption can be tough with the potential for so many unforeseen challenges. One thing you should do when approaching your timeline is to prepare to overlap versions. Not only will this give you a more realistic time to launch, but it also gives your developers the opportunity to test functionality for inclusion in their applications, while giving you the opportunity to collect important feedback (i.e., bug reports) for new versions.

With an API management system like DreamFactory, managing your APIs couldn't be easier. The admin console, for example, gives you a central place to manage your entire catalog of REST APIs along with your applications, scripts, users, roles, security settings, and more. This same console allows you to automate tasks and publish APIs for sharing, simplifying your workload.

Open Channels for Feedback

Overlapping versions gives you more flexibility and time for garnering feedback on new versions, but another aspect that will ensure your success is opening up multiple channels for developer feedback to be sent. These channels can come in many forms, whether it's an email system, comment area on your blog or in documentation, online forums, or interactive chat. 

What matters is not how you collect feedback, but that developers are able to submit their honest feedback in a simple and streamlined manner. If the feedback process is too time-consuming or developers feel their feedback will not be heard and implemented, they will not bother offering any, and that can lead to major problems in API adoption.

Invest in Documentation

Another step in nurturing the API adoption process is investing the time to create detailed documentation to ensure user success and minimize issues. Creating API documentation is no small feat, but creating documentation that focuses on your developers will improve their experience, boost their confidence, and help foster adoption where it counts. 

If you're worried about the time it will take to create documentation for all of your APIs, DreamFactory makes it easy. DreamFactory will automatically generate interactive API documentation for each data source you connect. Using Swagger, the most popular open-source API documentation project, DreamFactory's live documentation allows you to adjust parameters and see requests and responses before you start building applications. 

Go ahead and explore all of DreamFactory's benefits to learn how our platform can help you spearhead efficient and successful API adoption throughout your entire organization.

Focus on The User Benefits

One of the best ways to nurture the adoption of any new technology within your organization is to focus on how it will benefit your internal users. These benefits will help give users a sense of purpose as they go through the steps and challenges to implementing the new system, and when you connect the same system to meaningful business outcomes (like improved customer experience), they're able to see the big picture.

API adoption can easily be seen as a challenge or unnecessary complication to a developer's workflow, which is why focusing on the benefits they'll ultimately enjoy from the implementation can help them stay motivated as they face hurdles. In the case of API adoption when using a tool like DreamFactory, your developers will enjoy massive time-saving opportunities through the automatic integration and management of REST APIs.

About DreamFactory

With DreamFactory, you can integrate any file storage system, SQL or NoSQL database, external HTTP, or SOAP service and our platform will instantly generate a fully documented, flexible, and comprehensive REST API endpoint that your organization can begin using. This means your developers can shift their focus from hand-coding APIs to actually building applications. Mobilizing your API strategy has never been easier!

Interested in learning more about how DreamFactory can empower your organization to adopt APIs and start using them more efficiently? Start your 14-day free trial today and allow your teams to get hands-on with DreamFactory's advanced API management tools.