API Product Strategy: More Than Just a Feature Roadmap

As I approach the 250th Net API Notes newsletter, I'm spending a fair amount of time reflecting on past editions. Two pieces that stand out as having aged particularly well are the reflections on "Why are API Product Managers Hard to Find?" and "Is API Product Management a Role or a Person". 

Now, if you ask three folks what an "API Product Strategy" includes, you'll likely get four answers. Defining precisely what API product strategy means isn't being pedantic. How we frame an API effort – whether in terms of its technical capabilities or business value – determines how it is perceived, funded, and prioritized within an organization. And, for all too many APIs, we still describe them as technical projects to be done rather than business value to develop.

Often, an API product strategy is reduced to "make some APIs". In this edition of my Net API Notes, I want to address how we talk about API products, how that impacts how they're perceived, and what we should be doing differently if we want a sustainable API product strategy. 

Are your APIs described as a technical capability or catalyst for business value?

What I'm talking about is best illustrated with an example. 

APIs are often expressed purely in terms of what they do, but this lacks context on why they matter. Consider these two ways of describing an example API for processing payments:

Technical Framing:

"Our API provides an endpoint for initiating payment transactions, supporting tokenized card storage, and webhook notifications for real-time transaction status updates."

Business Value Framing:

"Our API reduces friction in online checkouts, enabling faster payments and improving conversion rates for merchants while reducing fraud risk through tokenization."

Some might feel that these two statements are a case of "puh-tay-toh" versus "pa-tah-toe". However, while the technical framing explains what the API does, the business value framing describes why it is valuable. Stakeholders outside engineering, like product managers or executives, care about improving conversions and reducing fraud, not about endpoints and webhooks. 

Let's do another example. This time, the API aggregates customer data from multiple sub-systems for internal use. 

Technical Framing:

"This API aggregates customer data from multiple systems and exposes it via a RESTful interface, supporting both batch and real-time queries."

Business Value Framing:

"This API enables teams to deliver a unified, 360-degree customer view, improving personalization and reducing the time needed to respond to customer inquiries."

I sympathize with the amount of effort that goes into just being able to talk across multiple previously siloed systems. No doubt you've heard some version of technical framing that has become more of a humble brag; a list of hills taken that include an alphabet soup of acronyms, random mythological references, and bizarre pet project names whose origins have been lost to time (i.e., "Our API aggregates customer data from the IBOOPA core, Huginn and Muninn engines, combining in real-time with Pho-snizzle insights").

But while that list of accomplishments might be a point of pride (or maybe just "specificity") for the engineering team, it reads as engineering gobbilty-gook to a business executive. When attempting to prioritize limited budget and talent, they want to hear how it improves customer experience and reduces operational costs.

Ensuring continued support for API initiatives requires business value framing.

Ultimately, adopting a more API-product-led approach means shifting the language around APIs to one that is more business-orientated. Doing so dramatically changes how they're funded, prioritized, and adopted. Here's how different stakeholders interpret the same API:

If an API is talked about only as three technical solutions in a trenchcoat, it may struggle to get budget approval. If, instead, it is positioned as a business enabler, it becomes a strategic investment. That doesn't diminish the real problems solved by developers. However, reframing in this way recognizes that business teams promote APIs that unlock new capabilities. Another benefit is that APIs built with a clear business purpose are easier to sustain because their value is evident and couched in the language ("aligned") with the larger organizational intent.

A feature roadmap Is NOT an API product strategy.

A common problem I see when I consult with enterprises of all stripes is the conflation of API product strategy with an API feature roadmap. Both are important on their own, but treating them as the same leads to incremental tech improvements increasingly isolated from strategic business initiatives. 

Aligning technical product managers and owners around a unified API product definition that serves both business and development teams requires a structured approach. 

Establish a Shared Understanding of API as a Product

Before jumping into roadmaps, API leadership must reshape how APIs are perceived across the organization. This means articulating:

• APIs are not just integration tools; they are enablers of business value.
• API products serve both business and technical stakeholders. Like a SaaS product serves end users, an API serves developers, partners, or internal teams.
• API success is measured by adoption, reuse, and value creation, not just uptime and endpoints shipped (the latter metrics may be easier to quantify, but the former numbers are what matter).

Define API Products in Terms of Business Goals

Technical product managers should shift the discussion away from technical features and toward business objectives. A structured way to do this is by framing API products around key business drivers during working sessions. Prompting discussion along these lines can include questions like:

• "If this API didn't exist, what business problem would be harder to solve?"
• "How does this API help us scale or create leverage in ways we couldn't otherwise?"
• "Who benefits from this API, and how does it make their job easier or more valuable?"

If your definition of what you do shifts from "Our data API provides access to user records" to "Our API accelerates customer service responses by giving teams real-time customer data", you're on the right track.

Orientate Your API Classifications Around Business Benefits

In 2025, we are all mature enough to admit that not all APIs are the same, right? Expecting all APIs to be built with the same "gold standard" as external-facing integrations is great, in theory. However, in practice, does a low-level microservice that serves as a technical implementation detail known and used only by its development team actually warrant the same level of documentation, stakeholder engagement, and oversight rigor? 

For the vast majority of companies, the answer is "no". As a result, they've divided their APIs into different categories, with each category defining certain expectations and requirements for the resulting product. Unfortunately, this categorization is often access-driven. This results in API categories based on a technical characteristic - whether the APIs are "external", "internal", or "third party". 

While this categorization may make it easier for security to identify all the doors and windows a malicious actor may be leering at, it does little to connect the dots between API products and how they deliver business value. 

Instead, your organization's broad classification of APIs should be based on their role in the business. Your actual mileage may vary, but some possible categories could include:

Rewording your categories this way and then rallying product managers and development teams around these terms helps ensure that every API initiative fits within a business value framework.

Foster an API Product Mindset with Incentives and Accountability

Ensuring correct incentive structures is one of the most challenging but necessary aspects of an API Product Strategy. That includes:

• Ensuring API ownership isn't solely technical - Assign API product managers responsible for business outcomes, developer experience, and adoption. If API product managers aren't available that's OK, but someone on the team should perform the API product role in addition to their current duties. 
• Tying the API success metrics to business KPIs - For example, an e-commerce API's success should include some allusion to cart conversion rates and not just API response times.
• Recognizing and rewarding API Wins - If a team's API dramatically reduces onboarding time for partners, celebrate that success. 

Giving visibility to how APIs are helping the company achieve its stated goals goes a long way toward ensuring continued investment in those activities.

Pulling It All Together

Listen, I get it: 9 out of every 10 API improvement efforts are launched in the belly of a company's engineering organization. The framing used to describe these efforts, and the APIs they produce, are natural extensions of the disciplines from which they are derived. However, shifting an organization from "API as a feature set" to "API as a strategic business driver" requires process AND language change. API product owners and change leaders must be intentional about:

• Framing APIs in terms of business value, not just technical capability.
• Shaping API roadmaps to align with business initiatives, not punch lists of programmatic geegaws.
• Embedding API ownership, measurement, and accountability across teams.

Those things are easier said than done. But they are the difference between scattershot, unaligned efforts that are eventually abandoned when the next tech trend comes along, and ongoing API investment that drives the business forward.

Wrapping Up

Spring is right around the corner in North America, and I'm looking forward to spending time outside soon. But before I head off to the softball fields, does what I described above match your experience? Have there been other product-centric approaches that you've found beneficial? Let me know, either directly or in the comments. I'd like to hear your take.

Till then,

Matthew (@matthew in the fediverse and matthewreinbold.com on the web)