API Evangelist Kin Lane addresses the biggest obstacles in API production, lack of knowledge and lack of time, and how to overcome these challenges in this blog.

In  Postman’s 2020 State of the API report, it was found that when it came to API production, the number one obstacle was “lack of time”, which was cited by more than half (52.3%) of survey respondents comprising 13,500 developers, testers, and even executives.

This was followed by a “lack of knowledge” with 36.4%.

According to Kin Lane,  API Evangelist and co-chair of the OpenAPI Initiative Business Governance Board, the solution to address both the lack of time and lack of knowledge that development teams face is an organizational matter that leadership needs to address.

“Those two things represent a lack of prioritization from leadership of these organizations, lack of prioritization of the API itself, as well as the lack of prioritization of their employees learning these new technologies,” Lane says.

During an episode of  Coding Over Cocktails, he explains that educating leadership and business users about APIs should be a priority — which means that it’s often not just some new vendor solution or some new trend that will drive better API production and consumption.

Besides convincing developers to embrace OpenAPI to design and deliver more consistent APIs, Lane says that publishers should also make them publicly available in a machine-readable way by providing access for other users through proper authentication, identity, and access management.

This, he says, would make your organization more agile in the long run.

"…we should have OpenAPI specs for all the services that we need out there — and those shouldn’t be hidden. Those should be publicly available, consistent, and up to date. And if you’re doing them well in a machine-readable way like this, it benefits your company and everyone else’s companies as well.

“And we got to get people over that fact that, if I have a catalog of up-to-date, open APIs for all the top services out there, I somehow benefit my competitors. Sure, you do. But it’s going to benefit you even more.” Lane furthers.

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