Business First with API Canvas
Use API Canvases. Find the right value proposition to your API. Define impact to business model.
Customer journey
Continue where service design left off and look at the "jobs-to-be-done" or tasks to be performed. Make sure you take the customer's view point.
API Value Proposition Canvas
Find all the APIs and other services needed to support the customer journey and bring specific value to the users (the end-users and the developers using the APIs)
API Business Model Canvas
Pick one API at the time for this canvas. Who else would be able to use it with the same value proposition? Create a business model for that API.
API Value Proposition Canvas
What APIs and other services you will need to bring gains or relieve pains from your users?
The Value Proposition Canvas is split into two parts, the API Consumer View and API Provider View.
Start with the API Consumer View. Think like the product managers and software developers of the companies/teams using your API.
Start from the right and work to the left.
It's important your team fills in the API Consumer view first. This will help innovate new ideas, focus on the exact behaviour, features and help needed and avoid building features that are not important.
Remember to validate the assumptions by asking needs from real potential API consumers.
- Describe step by step tasks API consumer needs to achieve.
- Next, highlight your API consumer pains that prevent or make it difficult to use the API. You can describe pains, risks and negative outcomes consumer wants to avoid, like leaking information or unsuitable payload formats, for example. API consumers may find the API difficult to use due to lack of domain or technical knowledge. They can be afraid of having no control of the features and roadmap.
- Continue to the "Gains" section of the API Consumer views: Describe concrete results, benefits, positive outcome your API consumer hopes to achieve.
- Now you are ready to switch hats. Go to API Provider View. List the API products or services your value proposition builds on. Describe in which ways these products, services, and features are pain relievers.
- Tell how to take away or reduce pains API consumers care about. Outline in which way they are gain creators. The value proposition makes explicit how the APIs relieve pains and create gains. Use it to design, test and iterate your value proposition. Talk to your API consumers. Concentrate on their consumers. Create a clear connection to API consumer needs. Use AVP instructions to learn how to work with the AVP.
API Business Model Canvas
Who wants to use your API, how do you collaborate with them, what is the revenue or other value and what exactly do you need to build, what you don't have? And with what costs?
The API Canvas consists of nine areas that have almost the same titles as in Business Model Canvas.
Start from the right and work to the left.
- In the center of the canvas, copy and fine-tune the value proposition based on the identified customer need and benefits you are going to provide (as identified in the API Value Proposition Canvas).
- In the Consumers section, list your API Consumer Segments. These are the API consumer groups you bring value with your Value Proposition. It's important your team fills in the API Consumer view first. This will help to focus on the exact behavior, features, and help needed.
- In Relationships area, describe how you will interact with API Consumers.
- In Channels section tell how the API is delivered to its targeted consumers.
- With the Cost section, you describe the financial aspects of the value proposition. In Cost Structure section, list development, operation, and platform costs of the API. Don't forget to list cost savings as well.
- Key Activities in executing the value proposition.
- Key Resources that are necessary to create value for the API consumer.
- Key Partners, people or resources needed to realize API-features in practice.
- In Revenue Streams, list revenue models. Or tell how the API helps to improve customer relationship. Sometimes the main goal is to stop losing customers and revenue or to provide something else of value (like keeping people alive or healthy).
API Business Model Canvas is the master document for next phases of the method. You should share the API Canvas with all relevant stakeholders. This includes external developers and other partners you need to work with.
