Earning the trust of your API consumers takes months and years to develop, but is something you can lose pretty quickly to a variety of controllable events. Trust will vary depending on the type of consumer and the industries they operate in, but the tone you set for your operations, including the quality, security, process, and governance you apply will all collectively contribute to the trust that exists in your API community, whether that is internal or external to your business operations.
These are the elements of trust when it comes to API operations.
- Uptime -
- Access - It is common to give early and exclusive access to API resources and capabilities to specific groups of partners before you offer them to the general public.
- Change - Change is embraced in an API-first environment. It is expected, welcomed, and seen as the right way. Teams are well-versed in defining, designing, and delivering API-driven change, and leveraging the feedback loop from these iterations to inform what is next. A Jobs-to-be-Done attitude equips everyone with a focus on the value present in change, and their training and confidence will prepare them for the work required.
- Reliability -
- Feedback - Provide formal, documented, and constructive feedback for teams about the design of their API, but also allow teams to provide feedback on the process.