API Review at scale: An Interview with Alex Savage

Aidan Cunniffe 2023-01-25

API Review at Scale

Alex Savage talks about the human side of APIs and how to start API reviews in large organizations with 100s of teams. He shares tips and some hard-won lessons about getting developers excited to build great APIs, and what it takes to support developers across a large organization and help them build high-quality, consistent APIs that their consumers love using.

Key Takeaways

• Focus API Reviews on the value the API provides to consumers. The role of linters and review tooling is to empower developers to get the basic standards right without needing API reviewers to tell them to do this.
• Don't build your "API Review" process as policing function. Build the stadiums, and cheer from the stands. Keep teams safe and give them guidance and resources they need to succeed.
• How you give feedback is more important than the actual feedback. Recognize that the people are on the other side of the review are trying to learn and do a good job.
• Don't be the "experts". Make the best practices and your team's insights accessible to everyone. The goal is for teams to become more autonomous.

Resources Alex mentioned

• Alex Savage on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)
• Linters Spectral (opens in a new tab) and Optic CI
• Your API is a hall of shame video (opens in a new tab) use it well :)
• API Days (opens in a new tab)
• APIs you won't hate Slack channel (opens in a new tab)