API Delivery with OpenAPI: Enhancing Governance, Workflows, and Developer Experience
Teaser
Join this workshop to explore a collaborative, design-first approach to API delivery, using OpenAPI as the single source of truth. Set within a financial payments scenario, this session covers everything from defining business requirements and infusing API standards awareness through example mapping, to ensuring seamless integration and consumer testing for safe API evolution. Attendees will learn how OpenAPI and Arazzo can drive documentation, virtualization, and contract testing to streamline API evolution, enhance governance, and elevate developer and consumer experiences.
Date: December 2, 2024 ｜Duration: 1 day
Location: apidays Paris 2024 conference at CNIT Forest – 2 Pl. de la Défense, 92092 Puteaux, France
Pricing: 799 EUR (30% discount for OAI members)
Bio
Frank Kilcommins is Principal API Technical Evangelist at SmartBear. Frank has almost 20 years’ experience in the technology industry, with his roles spanning from software engineering to enterprise architecture. His mission is to inspire, engage with and support the API community and SmartBear customers across the end to end API Development Lifecycle and Management space. Prior to joining SmartBear, his most recent roles have been focused on API led Digital Transformations and architecture modernization within multi-national enterprises, combining a mix of open source and commercial offerings to improve developer experiences. In addition to his roles at SmartBear, Frank is a board member of the OpenAPI Initiative and has spearheaded the new Arazzo Specification for API workflows.
Yousaf Nabi is a key member of the Developer Relations team at SmartBear, and currently wears the hats of developer advocate for Pact/PactFlow as well as being a community shepherd for broader Pact community. Yousaf is a ISTQB Advance Test Analyst and has more than 10+ years consultancy experience within Waterfall, Agile and Behaviour-Driven Development software life cycle methodologies projects, who is fully versed in agile transformations helping companies migrate to new ways of working. Yousaf identifies as a polyglot developer being well versed in many programming languages and testing techniques. He is passionate about technology and always willing to step beyond his comfort zone to learn new technologies and practices.
Who's it for?
This workshop is designed for all personas involved in API delivery (and consumption) including product managers/owners, software developers/engineers, architects, testers, technical writers will all find value in participating and gain a better understanding of the collaborative people element to delivering high-quality, long-living APIs. No programming skills are required, and the course caters for those with basic API knowledge looking to gain better insights and practical know-how in API design, delivery, and productization.
What you will learn
- Understand how the behavioural driven technique called “Example Mapping” can help to refine API requirements and practically introduce API standards.
- How to turn example mapping outputs into API designs using OpenAPI
- Learn the principles of effective API design that promotes reuse, extensibility, and security
- How to apply API standards and consistency for naming, to errors, to pagination, to versioning
- How OpenAPI can power comprehensive virtualization, testing, and validation of your APIs to ensure reliability
- Learn about the Arazzo Specification, and how it can help you deliver use-case orientated developer experiences and documentation to reduce the Mean Time to Integration
- Learn the concept of Contract Testing and how it complements OpenAPI to ensure you never unexpectedly break consumer expectations, and how it can be applied into your API CI/CD workflows
Contents
In this workshop, participants will embark on a collaborative API design and delivery journey. We’ll use an OpenAPI description as our source of truth and driver for change, focusing on a real-world financial payments system scenario. The workshop begins with demonstrating a technique called example mapping to establish a common understanding of the business requirements through the power of examples. This ensures critical personas on the team are aligned on the problem to be solved, and we’ll demonstrate how this is an optimal time to infuse practical API governance guide rails to create a solid foundation for API design.
We’ll explore API design standards tailored to meet the regulatory requirements of our financial services scenario and introduce tools to govern and document APIs in a design-first approach. Through practical sessions, participants will learn to create rich, interactive documentation, leverage virtualization, and use the new Arazzo workflow specification to provide first-class consumer experiences, ultimately reducing mean time to integration.
As we progress, we’ll build out a provider API and a client application powering their evolution through a mixture or by consumer-driven and OpenAPI driven contract testing, concluding with a demonstration of breaking change detection in action. This provides practical tactics to participants on how to evolve systems gracefully, all the time guided by OpenAPI and real-time feedback from contract testing. Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of how a human-centric, design-first approach enhances developer satisfaction and productivity, as well as the integral role OpenAPI plays in aligning humans and machines for optimal API outcomes.
Establish Requirements and Governance with Example Mapping
- Introduction to Example Mapping for deliberate discovery
- Align on requirements and acceptance criteria across personas
- Infuse practical API governance from the outset
- Exercise: Example Mapping for a Financial Payments API Scenario
The Power of API Documentation
- What is API documentation and why you need it?
- The difference between reference docs, concepts, and tasks
- The business impact and benefits of good API documentation
Designing APIs with OpenAPI
- Overview of key design principles: reuse, security, extensibility
- Establishing consistency through linting for errors, pagination, versioning etc.
- The power of examples in OpenAPI
OpenAPI-led API Delivery for Improved Developer Experience
- The role of OpenAPI in design-first development
- Creating a collaborative foundation for cross-functional teams
- The role of virtualization and what it can unlock for providers and consumers
- Unlocking parallel work streams for testing, development, and documentation
The Arazzo Specification
- Introduction to the Arazzo Specification
- How Arazzo can reduce consumers mean time to integration through elevated developer experiences
- Exercise: Leverage Arazzo to create use-case orientated developer portal documentation
Implementing Contract Testing for better API Stability
- Introduction to Contract Testing
- Consumer-driven versus Bidirectional (OpenAPI-driven) contract testing
- Using contract testing to safeguard against breaking changes
- Exercise: Setting up contract testing within our provider and consumer workflows
Automating Quality Loops through CI/CD
- Leverage the investments in OpenAPI-led delivery by integrating continuous validation
- Establishing automated quality gates to maintain API reliability
- Evolving safely by getting feedback through human interactions and automated workflows
Join the Workshop
Attendees will receive a paper and a digital certificate that’s awarded by APImasters and OAI.
Certification:
API Delivery with OpenAPI
by Frank Kilcommins & Yousaf Nabi