API Governance, the process of applying standardized sets of policies and guardrails to the design and development of APIs, has only grown in importance and prominence given the continued growth in APIs being produced. In this paper, we present an Action Research style approach to investigate and understand the utility of a multi-faceted API Governance process being adopted inside Google. We first reflect on past research around API Governance, and then introduce three new components, 1. API Improvement Proposals (AIPs) the documented source of truth for API design rules, 2. API Linter, an automated analysis tool which checks for adherence to / violations of AIPs, and 3. API Readability, a program to educate and certify API design experts. These three components are designed to build upon pre-existing processes to scale and improve API design. Through a mixed-methods research strategy, containing both a survey and a series of interviews, we evaluate the utility of these approaches in supporting API Producers. Our research shows that API Producers have positive sentiment towards API Governance, validating the general direction of the program. Specifically, our study participants highlighted the positive impact of API Governance on the quality of the APIs they produced, via consistency in both the outcome and approach. This paper also discusses future research opportunities to enhance API Governance, specifically with regards to newer API Producers, who reported worse sentiment towards the program than their more experienced peers.
Fri 19 AprDisplayed time zone: Lisbon change
16:00 - 17:30 | Requirements 2Software Engineering in Society / Research Track / Software Engineering in Practice at Maria Helena Vieira da Silva Chair(s): Fabio Palomba University of Salerno | ||
16:00 18mTalk | Recovering Trace Links Between Software Documentation And Code Research Track Jan Keim Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Sophie Corallo Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Dominik Fuchß Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Tobias Hey Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Tobias Telge Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Anne Koziolek Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Link to publication DOI Pre-print | ||
16:18 18mTalk | TRIAD: Automated Traceability Recovery based on Biterm-enhanced Deduction of Transitive Links among Artifacts Research Track Hui Gao Nanjing University, Hongyu Kuang Nanjing University, Wesley Assunção North Carolina State University, Christoph Mayr-Dorn JOHANNES KEPLER UNIVERSITY LINZ, Guoping Rong Nanjing University, He Zhang Nanjing University, Xiaoxing Ma State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Alexander Egyed Johannes Kepler University Linz Pre-print | ||
16:36 18mTalk | Towards Engineering Fair and Equitable Software Systems for Managing Low-Altitude Airspace Authorizations Software Engineering in Society Usman Gohar Dept. of Computer Science, Iowa State University, Michael Hunter Iowa State University, Agnieszka Marczak-Czajka University of Notre Dame, Robyn Lutz Iowa State University, Myra Cohen Iowa State University, Jane Cleland-Huang University of Notre Dame DOI Pre-print | ||
16:54 18mTalk | What Can Requirements Engineering Do for Emerging System of Systems? Case of Smart Local Energy Software Engineering in Society Ruzanna Chitchyan University of Bristol | ||
17:12 18mTalk | API Governance at Scale Software Engineering in Practice Mak Ahmad UC Davis, JJ Geewax Meta, Andrew Macvean Google, Inc., David Karger MIT, Kwan-Liu Ma UC Davis |