Why API Development Is Faster Than Ever—and What It Means for your Product Strategy

The recent Postman 2024 State of the API Report revealed a striking trend: 63% of teams can now produce APIs in under a week, up from just 47% last year. I read this statement and I wasn’t even shocked. I’ve seen my own development team accelerate our API development and we not only build API’s faster - but we build more of them. But why is everyone’s API development speeding up, and more importantly, why is this a good thing for your product?

Let's start with why API development is faster. The reasons can be broken down into two key themes: better technology practices and better teams using them.

Better Technology Practices

1. Widespread adoption of OpenAPI:

   • OpenAPI Specifications (OAS) are a standardized format for describing APIs in a way that's both human-readable and machine-readable.

   • Think of them as a blueprint or contract that defines how an API behaves—what endpoints are available, the data formats it accepts, and the responses it returns.

   • Writing API specifications in OpenAPI has become a universal standard, making collaboration between product and development teams more efficient.

   • Building anything off a specification is going to be faster and more consistent. It’s the technology equivalent of custom designing your home VS building from a plan.
     

2. AI Assistance:

   • AI tools can now generate OpenAPI specs based on input prompts, reducing the barrier for non-technical contributors to participate in API planning and design.

   • Since OpenAPI is a global specification, I can use AI to help describe requirements and build a draft output of how the API might work to take to an Engineering team.

   • The AI assistance doesn’t replace the Engineers work, however it’s so much faster to approach a team with a goal, a draft and ask for feedback than hand them a blank whiteboard.

   • The turnaround time from idea to build can be unblocked the same day, the same meeting
     

Advances in tooling:

• Platforms like Postman, Swagger, and API gateways have streamlined the development process.

• Many tools now automate tedious aspects like testing, documentation, and even deployment. API’s are more accessible than what they used to be but they also cover more of the support lifecycle

• QA teams can be empowered with API specifications and requirements, and use tools like Postman to verify API’s against specifications throughout the whole build cycle. Driving contract-led API testing during sprints can save significant time on the tail end of E2E testing.
  

Better Team Practices

1. APIs are no longer an afterthought:

   • Instead of being added at the end of development, APIs are the foundation. This mindset ensures teams are proactive about integrations and scalability from the start.

   • This reduces the amount of re-work required, even for other initiatives. Development becomes modular, as it should, and we can scale our development efforts far easier for future work.
     

2. Specification-first development:

   • The rise of API-first thinking means teams can benefit more than just technically by working to OpenAPI specifications.

   • If you have a blueprint of how you will build every API, you don’t need to ask the same questions for every initiative planning.

   • This accelerates the speed at which you can groom stories and plan developments and you can eliminate “busy work”
     

3. Reusable patterns:

   • Nobody likes to work inefficiently, and all of the technology practice improvements have helped make API work so easily standardised it can scale continuously

   • Features often follow similar structures or data flows. With a shared library of reusable patterns and contracts, teams can significantly reduce repetitive work.

   • This also impacts less technical contributors such as UX, where if we have a consistent technical pattern, they can translate this to a consistent design pattern, which can help streamline the end-to-end delivery process.
     

4. Cross-functional clarity:

   • Planning your development using an API-first strategy can help to align cross-functional teams early, and have them more involved from the start.

   • I’ll never want to replace the Engineers' ability to scope and estimate their work, but if I can contribute meaningfully by aligning their work to a contract, that will help the engineers focus on what’s important and efficiently use their time.

   • Additionally, working on a contract can translate cross-functionally. You don't need an expert

   • Engineering, QA, Design and Product can have a consistent standard to meet and can continue to optimise how they use it between every new feature developed
     

Better Products

Now for the ultimate question, these are all fantastic outcomes for development teams but how does it impact your Product strategy and have tangible business outcomes?

1. Accelerates Time-to-Market

   • Faster development ultimately means shipping features faster

   • Even for features that aren’t consumed by customers as an API, that doesn’t mean they don’t utilise API technology.

   • Consider this way of working for all new development to reap at least some of the benefits of speed
     

2. Lower cost exploration of Adjacent Market Opportunities

   • APIs enable teams to test new markets or customer segments with minimal upfront cost. APIs shorten the time it takes to validate assumptions and pivot as needed.

   • For instance, a quickly built API integration for a complimentary product could reveal whether there’s demand in a previously untapped segment.

   • If it works, you can scale. If not, the cost of testing was minimal
     

3. Prototyping at Scale

   • Building APIs quickly allows teams to create lightweight prototypes or minimum viable integrations to test the feasibility of high-risk features.

   • Faster API cycles make it easier to run experiments.

   • You can release API-driven features to a small group of customers, gather their feedback, and use the data to assess whether the feature is worth scaling.

   • Or even if you aren’t building a new API, if you have existing API’s built as per your contracts, this should make them modular and easier to build on for your next project
     

4. Support Customer Growth with Scalable Architecture

   • APIs are the backbone of modular architecture. When teams can quickly create and deploy APIs, they build a scalable product architecture that supports future growth without requiring massive overhauls.

   • This makes it easier to scale the product in the future, both horizontally and vertically with more concurrent use or global traffic.

   • You might not need it yet, but future product teams will thank you
     

5. Improves Cross-Product Consistency

   • Rapid development often leverages reusable patterns and specifications, leading to consistent APIs.

   • Consistency across APIs translates to predictable performance, smoother integrations, and a better overall developer experience for internal teams and third-party users.

   • The end user may not see APIs, but they benefit from their impact.

   • Faster, more consistent APIs improve the performance and reliability of integrations, resulting in a smoother user experience.
     

6. Supports Ecosystem Growth

   • For products with public or partner APIs, rapid API development helps grow the ecosystem. Third-party developers can build integrations faster, driving adoption and increasing the product’s reach and value.

   • Having access to these ecosystems can unlock new commercial opportunities for your product, such as commercialising the API’s or launching cross-sell product bundles
     

If you’ve gotten anything out of reading this far, hopefully it’s that faster API development isn’t just about speed for speed’s sake—it’s about building products that are adaptable, scalable and sustainable and have a place across your entire product suite. I'll be posting a bit more content on this in the near future as I uncovered far too much for a single post.

If you want any more reading on this though, I recommend checking out the Postman State of API and if any of those stats resonated with your experience: https://voyager.postman.com/doc/postman-state-of-the-api-report-2024.pdf?deviceId=d4294092-9f87-445d-9b0e-d83940bb60b5

Thanks,

Gemma

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hi, I'm Gemma, an experienced Product Manager in growing B2B SaaS who is passionate about the latest Product & Technology Trends. Someone once told me the best person to learn from is someone who's only 2 steps ahead of you. Their learning is recent, relatable and relevant, which is who I aim to be when I create content. I regularly publish on my blog, LinkedIn and record monthly podcast episodes discussing business & leadership. If you like my content, please feel free to connect on LinkedIn.

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