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2023

  • in API
  • 5 min read

My Learning Path Toward API

Before 2020, I dealt with API as a Consumer with intergration purposes, using only such tools as Swagger UI, Postman, and Insomnia. Since 2020, I have changed my side. And not as an API Producer but one who gives the Producers tools to build APIs. It's about the API Platform.

So, back then, I started my journey to learn more about API and Platform design. And it is far from being over. I can say that I know more than an average person with business analysis background about that topic. But I can't call myself an expert anyway.

During the recent webinars, there was a question about what I can suggest to learn about APIs. With this article, I address that question but in a different form. Instead of a reading list, I decompose the last three years of my career and describe what I did and keep doing to learn about APIs being an API Platform Product Manager.

  • in Media, API
  • 3 min read

Summary of the "Requirements & API" webinars for IIBA Belarus

Overview

Following a theoretical Part 1, I was glad to talk about more practical API-related things and ways they can be designed.

While preparing for the webinar, I expanded my knowledge of the FastAPI Python framework to design mocks. Some of them were not only displaying docs in Swagger UI but also worked kind of. My overall purpose was not only to talk about APIs from the Business Analysis perspective but to show them.

09.11.2023 Webinar "Requirements & API. Part 2" for IIBA Belarus

Following a theoretical Part 1 of the "Requirements & API" webinar, the second part will come on November 9 at 18:00 (GMT+2). Here is a LinkedIn event with a Zoom link.

We will dive into API design-first, OpenAPI specification, and related tooling. Also, we will review a few practical cases and API patterns.

See you there!

As I mentioned, the entire webinar is based mainly on my API Design series, which I have worked on throughout this year.

I will publish the recording as soon as it is available.

Stay tuned!

  • in Media
  • 2 min read

Requirements & API. Part 1 (26/10/2023)

Overview

On October 26, 2023, I hosted a webinar for Business Analysts about API and the requirements specifics about that (announcement).

I was very excited about that opportunity. Even that part was based on my previous materials published here in my blog, and from the offline API workshop, I spent a lot of time polishing and re-structuring the content to fit a remote audience with different backgrounds.

26.10.2023 Webinar "Requirements & API. Part 1" for IIBA Belarus

I am proud to announce that I am hosting a two-part "Requirements & API" webinar for the IIBA Belarus Chapter.

Part 1 will happen on October 26 at 18:00 (GMT+2) - a LinkedIn event link. The second part will come two weeks later.

That is an online version of the workshop I made in Warsaw this February. There was great interest in the event. However, many folks could not travel to Warsaw for this specific event. So, there was an idea to transition it to online.

  • in Media
  • 1 min read

My New Medium Article for the Analyst's corner

Along with my blog, I have several sources where I publish my materials. Recently, I started posting a new "Replacing Legacy" series of articles. That idea initially derived from my BArsawa (a.k.a Business Analysts Community in Warsaw) speech. In its turn, it derived from my lecture about Legacy monolith decomposition I made in 2019 (I will share a link later).

Product Manager: Sophomore Year

Cover

Toddler Vectors by Vecteezy

Last year I wrote a short essay summarizing my first 365 days as a Product Manager. One more year has passed, and it is time to share more insights or learned lessons.

Important notice: It is only about my experience, so some things may not apply to what other PMs are experiencing. Product Management is a vast discipline with different responsibilities across different companies and industries.

New Blog version with MkDocs

In early 2021, at the climax of the Covid-19 outbreak, locked up in the apartment with my wife and 6-month-old kid, I decided to have my blog. I will not dive into the reasoning there. I decided that sharing my thoughts on the media platform I own was a good idea.

My initial requirements were:

  • free hosting
  • own domain
  • control over the content and publishing capabilities

A static site generator, GitHub pages, and a custom domain name cover those points. Having a static site generator benefits in supporting the Markdown syntax, which I am using to write my notes. Plus, it is an additional technical challenge to configure and support that all by myself.

So my first choice was pretty obvious...

  • in API
  • 6 min read

Breaking changes & Backward compatibility

Breaking changes everywhere

I learned what backward compatibility means regarding software engineering when I started working on microservices. When you are responsible for services widely used by other teams inside and partners outside, you most likely become paranoid about maintaining backward compatibility of your API as much as possible. Especially when it is a highly volatile environment with rapidly growing functionality and direction changes on the fly.

At some point, I invented the term "backward awkwardability" - an awkward feeling while telling consumers that there are breaking changes in a new release, so they have to migrate. If your team does it frequently, they will say something like, "C'mon guys, you introduced breaking changes just a few iterations before! What's going on?"

Let's talk about backward compatibility and how to deal with the breaking changes in terms of API.