Organizational units in an API Ecosystem
In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business landscape, a well-structured and flexible API Ecosystem is no longer an option but a necessity for companies looking to stay competitive and relevant. However, managing it can pose significant challenges, and it requires, first and foremost, a comprehensive strategy that aligns the structure of a company’s organizational units, culture, and methodologies with its digital vision.
Communication and the Operating Model
Any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.
This means that the way stakeholders communicate within a company must necessarily be taken into account when designing and organizing the stakeholders of an API Ecosystem as well. The communication structure is therefore key when configuring an enterprise’s organizational structure.
There are of course more aspects that must contribute to this configuration:
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A set of clearly defined roles and responsibilities and a formal definition of processes between stakeholders. This helps to avoid confusion and duplication of effort, and ensures that everyone understands what is expected of them.
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A clear chain of command, which facilitates communication within the organization and between organizational units. This ensures that information flows smoothly and that decisions can be made quickly and efficiently.
In other words, we are talking about a company’s Operating Model, or, in this context, the Operating Model required to support an API Management Program.
ApiShare’s Organizational Structure
This is where ApiShare can come into play as a solution. Aside from managing APIs, ApiShare can mirror the structure of your company’s organizational units in both a flexible way, and in a way that is best suited to an API Management Ecosystem.
You can divide teams in many different ways, by subject matter or by project. You could, for instance, divide governance teams, form API delivery teams, all within a certain organizational unit, like, say, the Marketing unit.
But let’s dive in and explore the concepts of “Organizations” and “Groups” in ApiShare:
Organizations
ApiShare help you organize your API ecosystem’s structure, by using Organizations, which represent the top-level units within which all stakeholders must be placed.
These organizational units called Organizations are logical subdivisions of the overall ecosystem, designed to help organize different entities, from users, to APIs, to Applications.
Each organization is made up of one or more Groups, which allow businesses to more accurately characterize their real organizational structure.
Organizations and Groups can be used to represent different departments, teams, or functional areas, and can be adapted to meet the specific needs of a company. This level of granularity and customization enables owners to manage their API ecosystem in a way that is suited to their unique requirements, while also ensuring that the system is scalable and adaptable to their changing needs.
Let’s see how this works:
Easily Manage Your Organizations, Groups, and Users
ApiShare’s owners can create new Organizations with just a few clicks. Similarly, creating Groups is a straightforward process, allowing admins to quickly invite users to join and assign them roles based on their level of access and responsibility.
Additionally, ApiShare enables admins to easily modify the details of their organizations and groups, such as the description and contact email, ensuring that the system remains up-to-date and reflective of the current organizational structure. This level of flexibility and simplicity makes it easy to manage organizations, even as they grow and evolves over time.
If you want to learn more about how to invite and join an organization, be sure to check out this blog post: Join the ApiShare Ecosystem
Engage Your Stakeholders
ApiShare offers a valuable advantage by providing a platform that ensures all stakeholders in your API program are actively engaged and contributing according to their roles and responsibilities. By assigning appropriate roles to each stakeholder, you can ensure they have access to the information and tools they need to efficiently perform their tasks.
To learn more about roles and permissions, check out this blog post: Roles and Permissions in ApiShare – Default roles and their Capabilities
KPIs
ApiShare lets you always track the number of Organizations and Groups in your tenant, as well as the number of active users. This global view provides valuable insight into the overall performance of your API program. Plus, you can get even more detailed information about specific departments or functional areas by accessing the KPIs for each group. This lets you keep tabs on the health and growth of your organization.
Efficiently Manage Your Internal and External Organizations
Depending on the goals and objectives of an organization’s governance strategy, APIs can be used for both internal and external purposes.
In order to accommodate this need, ApiShare provides two distinct types of organizations: internal and external, so that APIs can be shared either only internally, within the company, or with external partners as well.
Effortless sharing of APIs between internal and external Organizations is extremely valuable for a company and ApiShare provides the ability to easily set and change the scope of any defined Organization and its APIs.
ApiShare Organizations and API Gateway Organizations
But what if you already have a legacy API gateway with its own organizational structure? No problem! ApiShare can synchronize its organizations with those of your API Gateway’s (provided your Gateway offers the appropriate APIs). You can have one-to-one mapping, where each ApiShare Organization corresponds to one Gateway organization, or one-to-many mapping, where one ApiShare Organization can have multiple corresponding gateway organizations for different deployment environments.
Furthermore ApiShare lets you link a Group to a Gateway organization, if this best suits your organizational needs.
Wrapping up
Keep up with our blog to learn more about ApiShare’s features, like its API Governance and API Lifecycle capabilities, or how it handles user roles within its operating model. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team to find out how all these features can help your company fully realize its API Program.
About the Author: Federico Oggioni
