Building an API Team

I personally believe that the success of an API initiative is at
least largely influenced by the selection and development of the
team that will build and maintain it.

Code-focused developers are not the right starting point. People who
think about information and long-term value capture are more likely
to produce better results. People who actually care about the API
beyond a thin-layer above their code are a great start.

We often say that we are trying to “Build the Right Thing” and
“Build the Thing Right”. But how do you know you are building the
right thing? How are you validating the implementation and the
behavior of the system? How are your business analysts supposed to
verify the API is doing what it is supposed to if your testing
strategy is complicated and code-focused?

In this talk, I will discuss these ideas and more. I will tell you
about a team I put together with no API background that built
what became a $300 million revenue stream in its first few years.

About Brian Sletten

Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. His experience has spanned many industries including retail, banking, online games, defense, finance, hospitality and health care. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and lives in Auburn, CA. He focuses on web architecture, resource-oriented computing, social networking, the Semantic Web, AI/ML, data science, 3D graphics, visualization, scalable systems, security consulting and other technologies of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. He is also a rabid reader, devoted foodie and has excellent taste in music. If pressed, he might tell you about his International Pop Recording career.

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