Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) impact the entire product development cycle and contribute to overall product success. Instead of building every application feature from scratch, APIs provide developers with a ready-to-use interface. As a product manager collaborating with your engineering team, you play a key role in the strategic decision of choosing an API that aligns with organizational goals.
The API marketplace is filled with vendors promising smooth connection solutions between software systems. However, if you don't carefully vet an API provider, you risk ending up with a service that leads to losses and disappointments. In this article, I'll provide seven factors to consider before deciding which API makes the most sense for integration.
Why PMs Should Vet APIs
As a product manager, one of your core tasks is ensuring a product aligns with customers' needs and business goals. You're the customer advocate inside your company, and a bad API choice means customer dissatisfaction, missed product development deadlines, and, in some cases, financial losses.
As you team up with developers to bring a product to life, it's essential to vet the API to ensure it delivers on your business' promises to your users. The right API is secure, reliable, and scalable, while the wrong one can introduce security vulnerabilities and slow down business operations
Thus, you need to approach every API with a user-first mentality and an understanding of the interface's offerings. I'm not saying you have to understand or write every line of the API's code. Instead, you need to understand its business impact and how it fits within your product vision so you can properly evaluate the risk of choosing the wrong one and the benefit of making the right call.
As you outsource some of your product's functionality to an API, focus on the one that provides the most value to your users and the company.
The Red Flag Checklist: 7 Signs to Avoid an API
Before vetting APIs, be clear about your integration goals. Audit your existing system and note down the functionalities your ideal API will perform. This information helps you to quickly cross off any API that doesn't fit your operational requirements. With your integration needs in mind, below are seven API red flags to watch out for. Use them as a checklist to narrow down your options.
1. No or Poor Documentation
As a PM, understanding what an API does, its endpoints, and security requirements helps you decide from a position of knowledge. However, an API with poor or nonexistent documentation makes accessing this insight more challenging and frustrates the integration process for developers.
Developers need API documentation with code samples, well-organized instructions, and clear explanations to aid faster implementation and reduce guesswork. If you and your engineering team can't access or understand the API documentation, you can't get optimal value from the product. So, go with an API that has clear and up-to-date documentation that supports developers in correctly and securely integrating the interface.
2. Broken or Weak Authentication
Cybercriminals target APIs because they sometimes handle sensitive user data like financial and personal records. Therefore, security should be a top priority on your API integration checklist. Avoid APIs with weak authentication and poor data protection measures, which will compromise users' security and ultimately reduce trust in your product.
Weak authentication means there's no extra layer of security to verify users' identities and prevent attackers from bypassing credential verification to access sensitive data or make unauthorized requests.
Look out for a secure API that:
- Uses authentication protocols like OAuth
- Complies with your industry's data protection regulations
- Implements strict access control measures
- Adopts multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Performs regular security audits
You can ensure data integrity and confidentiality by paying attention to these security signs.
3. Missing Versioning Strategy
A missing versioning strategy means there's no structure for managing or tracking API modifications, which can disrupt your services and cost you time and money. API vendors continuously fix exploitable weaknesses and add new features or functionality. However, you should be able to track those changes to stay prepared for any unexpected errors.
So, an API provider that doesn't communicate new version updates through changelogs or release notes may not be the best option. A good API vendor will have a clear plan for making changes to their API, ensuring a smooth transition between different versions, and preventing backward compatibility issues.
4. No Sandbox or Testing Environment
An API sandbox is a simulated environment where developers can test an API before adopting it in a live system. It also makes it easier to investigate potential integration issues and spot bugs before deployment.
Hence, an API vendor that doesn't provide an environment for thorough interaction with their API might be a red flag. Testing directly in a live environment can lead to delayed development cycles and frustrating debugging.
Developers should be able to explore an API's functionality and compatibility before making any significant investment. To make a confident decision, stick to API vendors who provide realistic sandboxes to validate integration.
5. Poor Scalability
One of the major goals of any business and part of your job as a PM is scaling your product, and choosing an API that can't support this goal is a bad investment.
Non-scalable APIs struggle to keep up with large volumes of requests when demand increases. They can't integrate smoothly with other systems or services without complex engineering or resource-intensive efforts.
Before you give the greenlight for an integration, evaluate the API's latency and scalability to confirm that it's well-designed to continuously maintain high performance as the business operations grow. Ideally, you want an API that has low latency, meets increasing load demands without outages, and doesn't compromise security or customer satisfaction.
6. Lack of Support or Community
An API with poor customer support or an inactive developer community could require a re-consideration. If there are no reliable means to communicate with the API provider, asking questions or rectifying issues down the road may be difficult.
Meanwhile, developers support products that provide frictionless usage. If an API lacks a supportive or active community, that might be a sign that developers are underwhelmed by its performance.
I'd advise you to choose an API with easily accessible customer support and a vibrant community, as these provide valuable assistance and access to feedback from real interactions with the API, respectively.
7. No Real Success Stories
Sound API decisions are grounded in success stories from others who have experienced uncomplicated integration. So, if an API has no track record of delivering quality services, you should be cautious. Efficient APIs have case studies, testimonials, and user feedback that you can bank on to learn more about their value and usability.
It's safer to explore APIs that have social proof from other companies or developers on their effectiveness and quality. However, if the API has other green flags, like concrete documentation and robust security measures, it can be worth a trial.
Protect Your Product by Asking the Right Questions
Choosing the right API comes down to asking the right questions. Your product's functionality depends on the reliability of the API provider, so carefully consider the API's security, performance, and scalability potential. These red flags above should help you make an informed decision and choose APIs that fit your long-term needs.