Introduction

In this document we want to discuss the needs and pain points associated with API collaboration.

APIs in their nature are collaborative. As interfaces they connect teams, businesses and enable groups of people to expose technology and domain expertise by removing the barrier of extensive knowledge.

However, the tools available can do more justice to this need and via our research we have discovered many opportunities.

This problem space doc deep dives into these learnings.

As an outcome, we would like to use this doc to further define our vision for Postman’s role in the realm of API collaboration and how we can evolve to support relevant needs.

Before jumping into the problems, I found it helpful to remember what collaboration means. Here’s the dictionary definition:

[Collaboration is] the action of working with someone to produce something.

From Oxford Dictionary

<aside> 💡 Learnings and insights

  1. Collaboration is a way of working and not a tool/feature in itself
  2. Collaboration is successful when someone’s knowledge helps another achieve their goals.
    1. It can happen in many different ways and embracing this is important so that it doesn’t feel forced.
  3. Everyone collaborates, but they may not be efficient - that’s when tools have an opportunity. </aside>

Okay, but why is collaboration needed for APIs?

The best way to understand the need is to go back to why APIs were even created.

A brief history…

The definition:

A method by which an application could fetch data from servers in a machine readable format.

Web APIs, as we know them today, are probably found in every application, across devices. With a brief history of only 20 years, its incredible that APIs are the most crucial piece of doing business online.

What lead to this? Back in 2000s, web APIs were adopted by commerce applications to build: