INTERFACE, by apidays - Design for your API customers with APIOps Cycles by Marjukka Niinioja, Osaango

Design for
your API
customers
with APIOps
Cycles
The Open and Lean method for
business-oriented API
development
Apidays INTERFACE 2021 - Marjukka Niinioja @mniinioja

Marjukka Niinioja
Founding partner Osaango Oy, local organizer of
apidays Helsinki and APIOps meetups, member of the
API Collective
Consulted and trained 200+ companies and public sect
or organizations on platform economy and
API economy business models, service and product stra
tegies and enterprise architecture
One of the authors of API Economy 101 –
book (2019) combining research with practical experien
ce
“Mother” of APIOps Cycles method.
Linked https://www.linkedin.com/in/marjukkaniinioja/
@mniinioja @osaangoltd
www.apieconomy.info
www.apiopscycles.com

Osaango is a dedicated member
of the API and Platform Economy
community
● Member of the OpenAPI Initiative and
Technical Steering Committee participating
in OpenAPI 3.X development
● Organizer of apidays Helsinki – part of the
apidays Global conference series and
community https://www.apidays.co/helsinki/
● Global community management of APIOps
http://apiops.info/
● Development and training of openly licensed,
Lean and business-oriented APIOps Cycles
method www.apiopscycles.com
● Founder Marjukka Niinioja is one of the co-
authors of API Economy 101, a business and
technology book on APIs and Platforms
https://www.apieconomy.info

There are guidelines and guidelines
Most organizations - and governments, think of API guidelines from a
technical perspective
● The Dutch https://publicatie.centrumvoorstandaarden.nl/api/adr/
● The Singapore Fintech guidelines
https://www.mas.gov.sg/development/fintech/technologies---apis
● Finnish API guidelines - why and how https://youtu.be/_9ha90Rnb6c
● Many companies have their own internal (or external) API design
and/or management guidelines

But do you have guidelines about
productizing APIs?

APIOps Cycles is all about
collaboration btw business & tech

INTERFACE, by apidays - Design for your API customers with APIOps Cycles by Marjukka Niinioja, Osaango

In the scarce world of API
research, this provides
important view on APIs,
from global economy
point of view.
How can we make APIs
more widely adopted?

Source: Huhtamäki & al. Visualizing the Geography of Platform
Boundary Resources: The Case of the Global API Ecosystem
Amount of APIs correlates
with Global Startup Index
and economic growth
areas.
APIs thrive in cultures
where user-centered
design is dominant.
Mashups combining
several APIs require
certain amount of co-
location and mindset for
marketers and developers
to co-create.

Marketers & Developers together?
It all comes down to value proposition as a starting
point…
But not necessarily the UI

But whose value proposition?
First think of end-customers, but
then move to developers who need
to build for the end-customers...

As an end-user
I want the lights to
change color
according to the
ambience I want to
create (or the
mode I’m in)

Get notified:
Change color when there are new
message in a specific Slack
channel

For work that requires
concentration:
The APIne Ski Lodge

Ordering pizza
From the nearest available open
pizzeria that has less than 15 min
queue

How can you get to the value
proposition that the developers
are interested in?

Identifying necessary APIs &
their value proposition:
Developer customers gains &
pains and features to provide
them
Customer journey of the
end-customers of the
ecosystem
AP Products and services
One API at the time to
the Business Model
canvas
Collect the other requirements with the other templates and
update business model when needed
1
2
3
4
4
6
7
Throw the model away, adjust it or start prototyping and going
to the next stages of the method

GAINS – benefits for using API
PAINS – problems using API
TASKS
Step by step
tasks API
consumer
needs to
achieve
API
CONSUMER
API
PROVIDER
A
B
D
F
C
E PAIN RELEAVER features
GAIN ENABLING features
API
Products
and
services
API PRODUCT –
MARKET
FIT
API Value Proposition Canvas
What pizzerias are
available near by?
Which have less than
15 minute queue?
Customer wants to
see a menu
Customer wants to
pay
Customer wants to
see the delivery
status
Customer wants to
see where the
delivery guy is
physically in order
to catch him when
he gets lost
● Hope not to have to
integrate to all
pizzerias separately
● Availability info
● Geolocation of
deliveries
● Cost and quality of data
and integration,
standardized openly
licensed interfaces?
● Performance and
reliability of services, how
”Real-time” is real-time?
● GDPR and PCI
compliance
● What are the
gains you want to
support in your
APIs as features?!
● How will you
answer the pains
and what pains
with your APIs?
0,5-2
hours

“Control the smart devices securely and in real-time from
internet with any technology and programming language”
“Get all pizzerias with availability according to location, build your
own pizza app, retain your customer data.”
Rev.com - one of our first US customers: “A RESTful API to
access Rev's workforce of fast, high quality transcriptionists
and captioners.”
Dev value props the previous examples

“We need technical help to build this nice
app!”

What are the goals of the water
services ecosystem?
“We provide
enough and
safe utilities
(?)” with data-
and API-driven
partner
ecosystem
“We provide
service, also
digitally” with
customer
portals and
apps
“We provide
water” with old
systems
2020 ->202X?
<-2018
Public data and
interfaces
Private sector
partners
Public sector
partners
Security of supply
partners
Regulatory
bodies

The tech is usually the easy thing, but
… these are the things that make or break the real stakeholder adoption
of the APIs
● Ownership of data, APIs and platforms
● Centralization & Decentralization of government (and there for
registers and ultimately authentication, API providers and ease and
reasons for collaboration)
● Political goals: free markets, privatization etc. are often the strongest
motivation to “force” APIs to be born (think of open banking, or
Finnish law on transportation APIs) but it might not be the thing to
keep them going

Platforms and APIs are used to build
ecosystem customer journeys
Customer journey combined from resources provided by individual providers via APIs
► Analytics and
content APIs
► Awareness APIs
► Sense APIs
► Recommending
products
► Personalized
offers
► Ordering
with voice
► Fraud detection in
payments
► Optimizing
routes
► Automated
maintenance
calls
“The ecosystem together generates value for its end-customers by integrating functionally
interdependent subsystems. “(Source: In API Economy 101 book from Mäkinen – Dedehayir, 2013;
more specifically Han, J. et al. 2017. Uncovering the conceptual boundaries of the ecosystems: Origins,
evolution and future directions.)

APIs enable scaling and
distribution of products, services
and organizations
“Integration orientation”
“Ecosystem and platform
orientation”
Read more in Chapter 11 of API Economy 101
e.g. Bosch, J. – Bosch-Sijtsema, P. 2010.
From integration to composition: On the
impact of software product lines, global
development and ecosystems. Journal of
Systems and Software, 83(1), s. 67-76)
Internal API development causes
organizational changes from within.
APIs provide possibilities to use external
parties as innovators and service
providers. This enables and forces
organizations to open up and think of
ways to collaborate with external
developers, ecosystems and API
providers.
Ecosystem and platform orientation
creates opportunities for external
developers to voice their needs to
development roadmaps, both business
and technical.

Travel chains & ecosystem according to the Finnish Act on
Transport Services
27
https://www.traficom.fi
/sites/default/files/med
ia/file/APIs%20when
%20acting%20on%20
someone%20else%C
2%B4s%20behalf.pdf

https://helda.helsinki.fi//bitstream/handle/10138/153193/Autio_
et_al_2014_RESER_2014_Proceedings.pdf?sequence=1
Ecosystem & Ecosystem journey of pet healthcare
Lab
Rese
arch

Example from water services ecosystem
– potential target state
Energy sector Real-estate
Building
maintenance
Building
automation
Consumers
Potential customers
Construction, building management, living, wellbeing, safety etc. ecosystems
Supply planning
Supply
management
Collecting
consumption data
Invoicing
Combining data,
analyzing
Reporting
Water service
facilities
Public
authorities
Maintenance
Data hubs, API
providers, system
integr.
Potential production and service
partners
Maintenance
Data analytics
and refinery
Customer
services
Self-service
Data and
API
services
Quality
assurance
Designing
network
Fault detection
Building
metrics

Traditional customer journey and
systems
Construction company plans
a new building
Water consumption
and quality
estimates for
budgeting and
pipeline choices
Service pipe
locations for
planning
Remote water
meter (building)
installations
Consumption data
gathering and
analytics
Smart building
controls
Operations
Pipeline network
data
Consumption
data
Water quality
data
Customer data
Fault detection
and
maintenance
data
Construction company/real-estate owner as a customer of water services
Construction company’s planning systems Building maintenance systems
Water services provider’s systems
Invoicing data

GAINS – benefits for using API
PAINS – problems using API
TASKS
Step by step
tasks API
consumer
needs to
achieve
API
CONSUMER
API
PROVIDER
A
B
D
F
C
E PAIN RELEAVER features
GAIN ENABLING features
API
Products
and
services
API PRODUCT –
MARKET
FIT
API Value Proposition Canvas
● All service pipe locations
near our real-estate & any
extension plans
● Real-time schedules for
water-meter installations
● Our own consumption and
quality data integrated to
our systems
● Cost and quality of data and
integration, standardized openly
licensed interfaces?
● Performance and reliability of
data services, ”Real-time” or very
old?
● Combining our water supply
data to our waster water, energy
consumption and fine-grain
data, single source, data models?
● Relevant, non-classified service
pipe locations
● Orders & real-time schedules for
water-meter installations for
partners with more than 10
installations per week
● Your own real-estates
consumption and quality data via
API, anonymized data on similar
locations
● Data is integrated with the data
hub that you can use also for
other purposes, like energy
consumption, use with APIs
● Monthly data included in supply
fees, 99,5 & 24/7 SLA, day-old data
and over 90 days retention with
extra fees
Existing service
https://verkkotietopiste.fi/
(the public service interface
for all utility pipelines for
builders in Finland) with
integrations to some of the
existing planning
applications like Trimble, etc.
Service pipe
locations for
planning
Remote water
meter (building)
installations
Consumption
data gathering
and analytics
Let’s imagine we could have
any APIs we wanted as the API
consumer…
And then imagine water services data
provider partner would decide to provide
this…
Water meter providers
APIs already integrated
to a Data hub (like
Platform of Trust), all
Data hub data available
via APIs
Water services
providers order API
(for installation
requests)
0,5-2
hours

Key Activities
Key Partners
Costs
Key Resources
Name of the API
Relationships
Channels
API Consumer Segment
Revenue Streams
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
API Value Proposition
1
API Canvas
● Water meter
technology
companies
● Water
services
providers
● …
● …
● Support,
communications,
sales etc..…
Integration support, Data storage and
maintenance
Developer community growth and management
API, SDK etc. Development
Other risk reducing costs (see Business Impact)
● Construction planners
● Real-estate owners
● Construction planning software
providers
● Building maintenance and autom.
companies
● Energy companies
● Security of supply bodies
● Water services systems
● XXXX € / month
● Monthly data included in supply fees, 99,5 &
24/7 SLA, day-old data and over 90 days
retention with extra fees
● More quota and more sources = more
revenue
● Water
consumption
and quality
data for your
building /
real-estate in
a standard
format
● Integrate
with all the
other utility
data
● Water cons.
API
Developer
experience
Development
activities
Business model of the API & API
provider
► …
► Construction planning
software providers
► Data hub providers
► Own developer site
More
potential
API
consumers
Similar API, but with anonymized or pseudonymized
data and different SLA could be used for open data
API
0,5-2
hours

Get more info
from
WWW.APIOPSCYCLES.COM
WWW.OSAANGO.ACADEMY
Download the e-book or check out our
Productizing APIs Bootcamp - next one
is in August!
HTTPS://THEAPICOLLECTIVE.CO
M/

INTERFACE, by apidays - Design for your API customers with APIOps Cycles by Marjukka Niinioja, Osaango

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