Our February session focused on product-tising APIs and our speaker, Jason Cormier from Mashery, has put together the following post in case you missed anything.

You can also check out Chris Chinchilla’s summary of the night.

Take it away Jason…

Product Managers: Start Taking Control of Your API Strategy

Let me take you back some 15 or so years ago. The Internet was in its infancy, and the World Wide Web was something mysterious and scary for most people, let alone businesses to think about. Getting yourself online required getting off your land line telephone first.

There were trailblazers of course, those who saw the potential of a new emerging technology and put the first commercial websites online. It was a technical challenge, but they succeeded. They invented the blink tag, the splash page, the shopping cart. E-commerce was born.

During these early years, almost all websites were built and managed by people who worked in IT departments who answered to the strange and slightly kinky sounding title of Webmaster. Eventually however, the power and influence of the technology was recognized as being too valuable and important to the business. Marketing and Product Managers took control and we haven’t looked back since.

You wouldn’t let your IT department plan and run your website strategy today. Yet in most companies, history seems to be repeating itself when it comes to their APIs.

It’s understandable of course, since you may not even know what an API is, let alone why as a Product Manager you MUST own the strategy for APIs within your business. But rest assured, much like the World Wide Web 15 years ago, APIs today present a wide open playing field for businesses to embrace a new emerging technology trend. Whether you act or not there are already trailblazers leading the way, some of whom are likely to become your future competitors.

First, the basics: What is an API?

API stands for Application Programming Interface. It’s a technology protocol that enables disparate systems talk to each other, and share information. Think of it like a system of security doors you put in front of your most valuable data, making it accessible only to those who have been given a key.

For example, imagine your business has a proprietary digital storage service that you use to archive important documents. Perhaps you decide to develop a mobile app that requires access to those documents. If your storage service has an API, it makes it easy for the app to access your data. The app is given a unique key, which it uses to request access to documents whenever needed. The API recognizes the key and gives the app access to the documents. Pretty simple, right?

Well, to be fair this analogy is pretty basic. There is a LOT more to APIs of course, it’s a complex piece of technology. And at some point before any API roll out someone has to make decisions about things like data structures, object classes, protocols, authorization tokens, proxies, caching, and more. Given this, you can see why most APIs are currently managed by IT departments. However if you take a step back, if you think like a Product Manager and consider the potential of this technology and what it can do for your business, how it can power your products, how you can better enable external partnerships… you’ll forget about the specs and start to focus on why APIs have the potential to be one of your most valuable commercial drivers.

Value of APIs as a Product

No matter who you work for today your business has digital assets of some kind, from which you are already extracting value. There are 3 main types of assets that are suitable for sharing:

1. Content: Consumable information, ex. FoxSports live stats feed, Lonely Planet city overviews, etc.
2. Services: Functionality, ex. Telstra SMS services, Dimmi restaurant booking engine, etc.
3. Data: Your internal business metrics, ex. units sold over time by location to whom, customer profiles, etc.

I can guarantee you that no matter what you are currently doing with these assets in your business, there are ways to extract even more value from them. And the key to optimizing the value of your assets is to make them easier to access, via APIs.

What kind of value?

When you have easy, fast access to your assets you can do things like:

Build and iterate your own products much faster.  Has your website team built a new search feature? Your mobile apps team can get access to it immediately via the API.   For example, Comcast now roll out new features across their products in just 30 minutes when it used to take months. Check out the Comcast success story & webinar where the Senior Director of Product Development & Technology and a Senior Engineer talk about the change and benefits.

Better business intelligence.  Want to know which products on which platforms are drawing on your assets most frequently? When everything goes through a single API it’s easier to track.  Sensis track all the advertiser impressions generated on their own products AND a range of 3rd party products via their APIs. More on how Mashery helped Sensis.

Facilitate strategic partnerships.  Want to see your brand integrated into 3rd party products?  It’s as easy as giving them their own API key. Fantasy sports platform, SportData was able to syndicate out to channel partners like Google and Facebook quickly and easily by providing access to their APIs. See how it drives results and ROI.

Introduce new revenue streams.  If your assets are valuable to you, maybe they’re valuable to others as well? With APIs you can commercialize your assets by selling access. Choice Hotels are using Mashery technology to assist in generating additional booking revenue via the 6000+ partners they service via their APIs.

There are a myriad of ways you can create and manage your APIs, and that’s definitely something you will need to work with your IT teams to define eventually. But don’t let yourself get lost in those details too early, as can sometimes happen. Focus first on what business goals you as a Product Manager seek to deliver. Hopefully you’re starting to see now, that by treating your API services like a product, you are effectively creating a service platform. A platform that empowers you to make business decisions and take action, without having to engage your IT team to build you something new every single time.

What does a successful API platform look like?

A successful API platform will look like rapid prototyping and faster innovation on the product ideas you have now, preparation and readiness for unknown future opportunities, and a willingness to open yourself up and let others carry some of the burden and risk. It’s not something all companies are necessarily comfortable with –  not even Google.

I’ll leave you with a link to the infamous leaked memo issued by Google employee Steve Yegge, who roundly criticized Google for failing to recognize the importance of APIs as a platform back in 2011:

 “Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.”

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Jason Cormier is the Director of Strategy and Business Development for Mashery in Australia. Mashery works with over 200 brands worldwide to help them manage their APIs in order to build new revenue channels, speed time-to-market, and spur innovation. Find out more at www.mashery.com

This month we have Jason Cormier from Mashery talking about APIs.   His session is entitled ‘Your APIs are so product ready, it hurts’.   We’ll be at the Mail Exchange at 6p for a 630p start on Thursday Feb 20th.    RSVP now!

And our afternoon coffee will be the following Thursday, the 27th, at Brunetti’s at City Square (Swanston & Flinders Ln).   We’ll be there from 2-3pm.   RSVP now!

You can just turn up for any of our events but we appreciate it when you RSVP as it gives us an idea re: how big of a table to grab at coffee or organising space at Mail Exchange.

We have 2 more events before the end of the year so hope to see you – at least once!!

This month’s evening event is our annual social. There’s no speaker, no specific topic – it’s just all about chatting, catching up, talking product management (or not) and getting to know each other better. It’s also Product Anonymous’s 2nd birthday!!!!

This year our end of year social is Thursday Nov 21st at the Sahara bar on Swanston st. Sign up here: 

And then we’ll finish off the year with an afternoon coffee on Thursday Nov 28th, 2-3pm, City Square by Brunetti’s. Drop in any time when you can, we will be there the whole hour. Sign up here: 

For those who don’t know, I’ve been overseas the last few months – mostly in Shanghai. Being in a new city with such a different culture to my own (even my adopted cultures), I found I was constantly asking ‘why’ on a very regular basis.

I was taking mandarin classes learning how to ask ‘what’ and ‘where’ but what I really wanted was to ask ‘why’. I kept seeing all sorts of scenarios where I wanted to ask ‘why’! For example, why do some foods need to be wrapped in layer upon layer of plastic wrap when meat was available for sale unrefridgerated on a cardboard table?

Although even after I learned the word for ‘why’ – wèishéme – I knew I wouldn’t be able to understand the answers (my mandarin has improved but it’s very much a work in progress!). I became a little obsessed with wèishéme and it got me thinking about asking the question in product management.

Whether we’re talking with a customer or end user, determining which feature to build next or how to market our product, understanding the ‘why’ is needed to help us connect, make our products great and create success. Understanding ‘why’ uncovers the value and explains why we care, what the context is, influences us and focuses on the problem (not the solution).

We can integrate ‘why’ into our existing tools like positioning statements, interviews & research, and even agile stories.

Some of the references include:

Simon Sinek’s ‘Start with Why’ TED talk & the golden circle

Bill DeRouchey’s ‘Power of Why’ deck on slideshare

Steve Portigal’s Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

I’d also recommend The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. It didn’t make it into the deck but is an excellent read.

At Thursday’s meeting, it was suggested we host a monthly coffee so we’re giving it a go this week.   Thursday Oct 3rd from 2-3pm in the CBD.  Location details below.

The idea came as an alternative for people who can’t attend in the evening and/or want more than just 1 time a month to talk about product management.

Our evening events have time to meet people & chat although we always have a topic for discussion.  With the coffee session, it’s purely all coversation on whatever topic you want.

We hope to see you there!  We’d love your feedback on this idea too!

Thursday Oct 3rd at Captains of Industry at 2 Somerset Place Lvl 1 from 2-3pm.   We’ll have some sort of signage to indicate Product Anonymous (ie showing our logo).

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Hi everyone,

Some of you know I’ve been in China for the last several months – but I’ll be back next month & presenting at the next #prodanon on Thursday Sept 26th!     Will be great to see everyone!!

I’ll be talking about:

(that’s ‘Why’ in mandarin)

Whether we’re talking with a customer or end user, determining which feature to build next or how to market our product,  understanding the ‘why’ is needed to help us connect, make our products great & create success.

Come hear why it’s the most important question & how you can get to ‘why’ faster.

Speaker:

In case we don’t know each other, here’s the backstory…

After several months in China, Jen Leibhart will be back in Melbourne for the September meeting.   Jen is a co-founder of Product Anonymous,  co-organiser of Product Camp and has been a product manager for mobile & web products including games, recruitment software, ecommerce, news, communities & more.

Location:

As usual we’ll be at the Mail Exchange Hotel on the corner of Spencer & Bourke St.    Go down the escalator, head to the left side of the bar where the restaurant is then look to the left where the function rooms are.  That’s where we are.

We’ll be there for 6pm onwards & the talk starts about 6:30p.

At last month’s Product Camp, Aaron Wallis had put forward a topic on Uservoice but then wasn’t able to attend camp so we’ve asked him to come along to this month’s Product Anonymous.

His topic?  ‘Employing Social Data for Passive Insights’

Social data offers more than just whats hot, and what’s not. Lets have a look at how social data offers a unique insight to product development and strategy.

Aaron Wallis is the Founder of Lexer. Lexer is a data driven consultancy that’s passionate about the value behavioural technology can bring to all aspects of business.