Good APIs Project

Effective projects require effective planning. Rather than just adding an API to an existing service/software and moving straight into coding developers should consider properly planning, resourcing and managing the creation, release and use of APIs. They need to check that there isn’t already a similar API available before gathering data or developing something new. Then spend time defining requirements and making sure they consider the functionality they want the user to access.

Although formal planning may not always be appropriate in some ‘quick and dirty’ projects some form of prototyping can be very helpful. Some areas that might need consideration are scale, weighing up efficiency and granularity.

Authors who change their specification or don’t produce an accurate specification in the first place may find themselves in trouble later on in a project.

“You need to implement the same functionality at least 3 times before you’ve got enough of a feel for it to be able to factor out an API for it.“