How do you coordinate your API and App development cycles?

[dcouldwell]

APIs don't exist in isolation, they're intimately linked to the Apps that consume them and the Targets systems they're exposing. I've written up some thoughts on how you might use the default Edge Cloud setup to help you coordinate these cycles together here but would welcome comments from the community on these approaches. I'm also interested in experiences with other configurations e.g. private cloud or SMB.

[dcouldwell]

@Anil Sagar, @Marsh Gardiner, @Jeremy Brown, @oseymen@apigee.com, @Sean Davis would be interested in your thoughts

[davissean]

I agree with pretty much everything in your article, with one addition.

To truly enable both your API developers and your App developers, mocks should be built to mimic the target system AND the APIs themselves. If using OpenAPI specifications then there are tools to generate mock responses very easily, so the maintenance overhead is low. However if these specs haven't been created yet, then the API team can provide sample API responses to the App developers, deployed using a framework like Amok.

Whilst API developers can create consumable APIs in a matter of days, this approach reduces that time to a matter of hours.