Here are 7 books that Patterns for API Design fans have personally recommended if you like
Patterns for API Design.
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I specialize in helping organizations scale their API design and development processes and improve their API governance. With a background in software engineering, I now work full-time as an API consultant. I hope you find the books on this list enjoyable.
There are quite a few books on web API design, but James’ book is my favorite. I like how the book delves into not only the technology of web APIs but also James’ unique approach to API design—known as the Align Define Design Refine method (ADDR).
This methodical approach to API design begins by aligning the team on the business capabilities to be exposed by the API. Subsequently, the team can model and design the API operations that implement those capabilities using the techniques described in the book.
It is a valuable methodology to have in any software team's design toolbox. I highly recommend James’s book.
Principles of Web API Design brings together principles and processes to help you succeed across the entire API design lifecycle. Drawing on extensive in-the-trenches experience, leading consultant James Higginbotham helps you align every stakeholder on specific outcomes, design APIs that deliver value, and scale the design process from small teams to the entire organization.
Higginbotham helps you bring an "outside-in" perspective to API design to reflect the voices of customers and product teams, map requirements to specific and well-organized APIs, and choose the right API style for writing them. He walks through a real-world…
I specialize in helping organizations scale their API design and development processes and improve their API governance. With a background in software engineering, I now work full-time as an API consultant. I hope you find the books on this list enjoyable.
I've seen organizations struggle with adopting a business-led API strategy. A key part of doing this involves creating an effective operating model around how different business units or departments can own and deliver APIs effectively.
Luis' book addresses this challenge by presenting various operating models for APIs (centralized, federated, and platform-based) and offering guidance on creating a platform-based operating model. He addresses API architecture as well and I like his idea of API-Led architectures.
This is my go-to reference for organizations that wish to adopt APIs at scale and need to organize multiple teams and departments that own APIs. I found myself referencing it frequently on a project and highly recommend it.
A strategy and implementation guide for building, deploying, and managing APIs
Key Features
Comprehensive, end-to-end guide to business-driven enterprise APIs
Distills years of experience with API and microservice strategies
Provides detailed guidance on implementing API-led architectures in any businessBook Description
APIs are the cornerstone of modern, agile enterprise systems. They enable access to enterprise services from a wide variety of devices, act as a platform for innovation, and open completely new revenue streams.
Enterprise API Management shows how to define the right architecture, implement the right patterns, and define the right organization model for business-driven APIs.
I specialize in helping organizations scale their API design and development processes and improve their API governance. With a background in software engineering, I now work full-time as an API consultant. I hope you find the books on this list enjoyable.
I enjoyed this book because it provides a comprehensive treatment of various aspects of API management, including API strategy, architecture, design, documentation, versioning, security, testing, analytics, and governance.
The book effectively introduces and covers each of these areas. I am particularly impressed with the chapter on API governance and the governance model presented by the author. Incidentally, as part of some research I was doing, I found that the author's definition of API management is one of the most widely referenced in academic literature.
APIs are the enablers for a thriving ecosystem that can drive revenue growth and ROIs for any organization. This book will cover all relevant topics and trends that enterprise architects need to know to build and govern APIs as a product.
The second edition of the API Management builds on the foundation established in the first edition to cover recent advances in API development as well as the principles and best practices of building API as a product. It has been updated to cover the latest and emerging trends in API architecture, design, and implementation covering the use of gRPC,…
I specialize in helping organizations scale their API design and development processes and improve their API governance. With a background in software engineering, I now work full-time as an API consultant. I hope you find the books on this list enjoyable.
The book provides a modern approach to API architecture. In the section on API Traffic Management, I appreciated the discussion on API gateways and service meshes—their history, features, taxonomy, and common implementation pitfalls. It was great to see Kubernetes-related examples for API gateways and service meshes. I also liked the coverage of the API lifecycle, deployment, observability, security, and testing topics.
The book provides a very good architectural perspective, using C4 diagrams to explain the case studies and Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) to provide guidelines on questions to ask when making an API architecture decision. This is a great book on API architecture.
Most organizations with a web presence build and operate APIs; the doorway for customers to interact with the company's services. Designing, building, and managing these critical programs affect everyone in the organization, from engineers and product owners to C-suite executives. But the real challenge for developers and solution architects is creating an API platform from the ground up.
With this practical book, you'll learn strategies for building and testing REST APIs that use API gateways to combine offerings at the microservice level. Authors James Gough, Daniel Bryant, and Matthew Auburn demonstrate how simple additions to this infrastructure can help engineers…
Defining and managing the requirements for a software system is hard! I’ve been interested in improving how projects handle their requirements for more than 35 years. I realized how important this was when I saw how many projects—including my own—struggled and failed when they neglected to build a solid foundation of well-understood and clearly communicated requirements. I’ve personally used nearly all of the techniques described in my book Software Requirements, and I got always better results when I applied those techniques. My books, articles, training courses, presentations, and videos on requirements have been helpful to thousands of business analysts worldwide for many years.
I recognized the value of use cases the first time I used them successfully on a project. Some years later I developed a 1-day training course on use cases. I read four of the most popular use case books then available, cover to cover, one right after the other. Use Cases: Requirements in Context did the best job of presenting a practical approach to applying the use case technique.
Shifting the requirements focus from system features to a usage-centric viewpoint provides many benefits, and use cases are the best way I’ve found to approach that. They provide an organizational structure for grouping related information relating to how users will interact with the system to perform tasks. This book describes a solid way to apply the use case technique.
This book describes how to gather and define software requirements using a process based on use cases. It shows systems analysts and designers how use cases can provide solutions to the most challenging requirements issues, resulting in effective, quality systems that meet the needs of users.
Use Cases, Second Edition: Requirements in Context describes a three-step method for establishing requirements-an iterative process that produces increasingly refined requirements. Drawing on their extensive, real-world experience, the authors offer a wealth of advice on use-case driven lifecycles, planning for change, and keeping on track. In addition, they include numerous detailed examples to illustrate…
My passion as a teacher and writer is to help students and others interpret, understand and enjoy architecture and the built environment, and to help them respond in their own designs to the complexities of place, people, and construction. I have chosen five well-established books on analysing architecture that are highly illustrated, avoid jargon, can be explored rather than needing to be read sequentially cover-to-cover, and have lasting value. They offer guidance for beginning students and a checklist for the experienced. They are books to be kept handy and repeatedly consulted. Of course, analysing existing architecture is invaluable in designing new architecture. I hope you enjoy them.
The first three books on my list concentrate on building form and space, with little about function.
The ‘pattern language’ is different, mapping human activities onto appropriate built forms, and advocating repeated patterns that have been found to work.
Christopher Alexander wants us to use the patterns in designing responses to situations, but they also help to judge how well-built spaces fit their contexts in analysing architecture.
Although Alexander maps activities onto his own preferred design style, the patterns are not inherently specific to any style or period of architecture.
Despite being written 50 years ago, this one-of-a-kind book is still fresh and relevant.
You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture,…
I’m puzzled by how people and technology evolve—as humankind we created all of these wonders to make our life easier. At the same time, I feel that we are more focus on the technology and processes, rather than people. It drew me to the topic of sociotechnical systems, which fascinates me. I’ve formal education in IT, and everything is binary; however, during my career I was drawn to the intersection of technology and people. My mission in life is to support a new generation of leaders that want to create an organisational environment that puts people in the center!
I love pattern languages. And Team Topologies brings patterns for team types and their interactions. Most importantly, they address fundamental problems of the software industry: how teams organise for fast flow, and how teams cope with cognitive load. The book steams from the author's experience in the DevOps community, and it is widely used across the world. Last but not least, Team Topologies give us a language that support organisation evolution.
Companion book Remote Team Interactions Workbook now available!
Effective software teams are essential for any organization to deliver value continuously and sustainably. But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs?
Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity.
In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel…
