Most successful technology companies today have a vibrant partner ecosystem. These companies realize that you can never match growth with the given amount of resources. The only way to scale to meet the customer's needs is to establish a partnership with other organizations to handle the load. This also introduces a different challenge which is to figure out a way to maintain a consistent level of quality produced by these partners. That’s where a Partner or Product level certification program comes in. It introduces a base line set of features, establish quality metrics and consistent experience to the products that are built by partners. Planning for and developing a Certification program is a monumental and ever changing task. In this talk we discuss the approach and pitfalls to planning, designing and developing a dynamic API Certification program.

1. Loke-Uei Tan (@lokeuei)
Developer Relations
How to Run a Successful
API Certification Program
Aug 2015

2. Certification refers to the confirmation
of certain characteristics of an object,
person, or organization. This
confirmation is often, but not always,
provided by some form of external
review, education, assessment, or
audit.
Software, App or
Integration

4. WE <3 ALL

5. Quality?

6. County /
Parish
State
Federal
City /
Town
International
GovernmentCommerce
MPOS /
POS
eComm
ERP
Engines and Databases
Calculation / Doc Management / Forms
AVALARA
3rd Party
Products
ENGINES & DATABASES
CONTENT
Boundaries, Rules, Rates, Citations, Exemptions,
Licenses, Certificates, Forms, Products, UPC/HTC
codes..
$
Platform
Payment
Determination Doc Mgmt Compliance
PRODUCTS400+
Connectors
to 3rd Partner
Systems
API

8. Inconsistent
Features
Inadequate Testing
Slow Response
Times
Security Threats

9. Wrongly Set Expectations
Finger Pointing
Delayed Implementation
Angry Customers
Cancellations
Negative Word of Mouth

10. What can we do?

11. Verified
Sending & received calls as
expected
Verified on the backend
Tested
Demonstrable
Installation & setup functions
Certified
Pass a published criteria
Expanded tests
Requires more work

12. What do we test for?

13. Functionality
Best Practice
Installation
Setup & Configuration
Documentation
Support Escalation Process

14. Is that all?

15. People

16. Recruit
Qualify
Sign
Kickoff
Build &
Certify
Go To
Market
Ongoing
Support
Business
Development
Customer
Support
Channel
Development
Developer Relations
Automation

17. Robust
Support
Infrastructure

19. Other Hazards

20. Developer is :
Not Willing
Not Committed
Low Priority

21. Developer
Quits!

22. Ever Changing
Requirements

23. Recertification
Process
API Versioning
Stick or Carrot?

24. Dealing
with Scale

25. Testing Tools
Test Harness
Automation

26. < Support> CustomersFaster Go-

27. Ensure Consistency
Great Marketing Tool
Happy Customers

28. @avadev