This document discusses strategies for building an API platform and discusses factors to consider like teams and the Dunbar number. It analyzes different strategies like single-team APIs that are optimized for a single team but have low reuse, ecosystem APIs that are optimized for adoption but have high overhead, and near-team APIs that reflect your organization. It also discusses structures for your organization like the centralized glacier which is stable but hard to experiment with, shipping your org which is easy for producers but hard for consumers, and keeping APIs internal which is easy for producers but unstable for consumers. The best strategy balances ease for consumers and producers while allowing for autonomy and central governance.

1. DIOGO LUCAS | SOFTWARE ARCHITECT @ ATLASSIAN | @DIOGOCLUCAS
YAGNI, YMMV & APIs
Building a hybrid strategy for your API platform

2. THERE’S NO ONE-SIZE-FITS-
ALL STRATEGY FOR APIS.
THINK OF TEAMS WHEN
FIGURING OUT YOURS.

3. 15035155
DUNBAR NUMBER

4. 150155
DUNBAR NUMBER, APPLIED
Consumers
Producers
single team
near teams
(dunbar)
countless teams
(ecosystem)

5. SINGLE-TEAM APIS
Fast & breaking Low overhead Optimized for
(low) latency
Low reuse,
low value

6. ECOSYSTEM APIS
Long-term
support
High overhead Optimized for
adoption
High reuse,
high value

7. NEAR-TEAM APIS
Middle-ground Reflect your org
(Conway)

8. mixing and matching

9. THE CENTRALIZED GLACIER
Slow/heavy process
Stable
Hard to experiment
150

10. SHIPPING YOUR ORG
Hard on consumers
Easy on producers
Tendency to diverge
Not suitable for public APIs
Hard to experiment

11. SHIPPING YOUR ORG II
Hard on consumers
Easy on producers
Tendency to diverge
Not suitable for public APIs

12. KEEPING IT TO YOURSELF
Unstable for consumers
Easy on producer teams

13. NIMBLE ORG
Easy on producers
Internal s2s challenges
Easy on consumers
Central API governance
Good autonomy balance

14. Easy on consumers
FULL SHEBANG
Most complex structure
Central API governance
Scales to large orgs
150155

15. Tooling/processes
AKA and now for the nerdy bits…

16. 150155
TOOLING/PROCESSES (YAGNI)
gradual rollouts
real-time monitoring/tracing
service mesh
API gateways
RSockets
HATEOAS
gRPC
GraphQL
API design & governance
operational guarantees
PRACTICES
PLATFORM
PROTOCOLS
consumer-driven contracts

17. @DIOGOCLUCAS | WWW.LINKEDIN.COM/IN/DIOGO-LUCAS
thank you