Abstract
APIs provide value beyond technical functionality. They enable and manage access to strategic business assets and play a key role in enabling software ecosystems. Existing work has begun to consider the strategic business value of software APIs, but such work has limited analysis capabilities and has not made use of established, structured modeling techniques from software and requirements engineering. Such modeling languages have been used for strategic analysis of ecosystems and value exchange. We believe these techniques expand analysis possibilities for APIs, and we apply them as part of a cross-company case study focused on strategic API planning and analysis. Results show that goal, value, and workflow modeling provide new, API-specific benefits that include mapping the API ecosystem, facilitating incremental API planning, understanding dynamic API-specific roles, identifying bottlenecks in API change workflows, and identifying API value.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
References
Hammouda, I., Knauss, E., Costantini, L.: Continuous API-design for software ecosystems. In: Proceedings of 2nd International WS on Rapid and Continuous Software Engineering (RCoSE 2015 @ ICSE), Florence, Italy (2015)
de Souza, C.R.B., Redmiles, D.F.: On the roles of APIs in the coordination of collaborative software development. CSCW 18(5), 445 (2009)
Nordic API: Developing the API mindset: a guide to using private, partner, & public APIs (2015). https://nordicapis.com
IBM Institute for Business Value: Evolution of the API economy. Adopting new business models to drive future innovation (2016)
Oracle Communications: Making money through API exposure. Enabling new business models (2014). http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/communications/comm-making-money-wp-1696335.pdf
Aitamurto, T., Lewis, S.C.: Open innovation in digital journalism: examining the impact of open APIs at four news organizations. New Media Soc. 15(2), 314–331 (2013)
Eric, S.: Social Modeling for Requirements Engineering. MIT Press, Cambridge (2011)
Gordijn, J., Akkermans, H., Van Vliet, J.: Designing and evaluating e-business models. IEEE Intell. Syst. 16(4), 11–17 (2001)
Dumas, M., ter Hofstede, A.H.M.: UML activity diagrams as a workflow specification language. In: Gogolla, M., Kobryn, C. (eds.) UML 2001. LNCS, vol. 2185, pp. 76–90. Springer, Heidelberg (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45441-1_7
Yu, E., Deng, S.: Understanding software ecosystems: a strategic modeling approach. In: Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Software Ecosystems, IWSECO-2011 Software Ecosystems 2011, Brussels, Belgium, pp. 65–76 (2011)
Dalpiaz, F., Franch, X., Horkoff, J.: iStar 2.0 language guide. arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.07767 (2016)
Lindman, J., Hammouda, I., Horkoff, J., Knauss, E.: Emerging perspectives to API strategy. IEEE Software (Under revision). https://tinyurl.com/yaofetrx, https://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/so/preprint/08501965-abs.html
Horkoff, J., et al.: Goals, workflow, and value: case study experiences with three modeling frameworks. In: Poels, G., Gailly, F., Serral Asensio, E., Snoeck, M. (eds.) PoEM 2017. LNBIP, vol. 305, pp. 96–111. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70241-4_7
Boucharas, V., Jansen, S., Brinkkemper, S.: Formalizing software ecosystem modeling. In: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Open Component Ecosystems, pp. 41–50. ACM (2009)
Bosch, J.: From software product lines to software ecosystems. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Software Product Line Conference, pp. 111–119. Carnegie Mellon University (2009)
Jansen, S., Finkelstein, A., Brinkkemper, S.: A sense of community: a research agenda for software ecosystems. In: 2009 31st International Conference on Software Engineering-Companion Volume, ICSE-Companion 2009, pp. 187–190. IEEE (2009)
Handoyo, E., Jansen, S., Brinkkemper, S.: Software ecosystem modeling: the value chains. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital Ecosystems, pp. 17–24. ACM (2013)
Sadi, M.H., Yu, E.: Modeling and analyzing openness trade-offs in software platforms: a goal-oriented approach. In: Grünbacher, P., Perini, A. (eds.) REFSQ 2017. LNCS, vol. 10153, pp. 33–49. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54045-0_3
Biffl, S., Aurum, A., Boehm, B., Erdogmus, H., Grünbacher, P.: Value-Based Software Engineering. Springer, Heidelberg (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-29263-2
Gordijn, J., Petit, M., Wieringa, R.: Understanding business strategies of networked value constellations using goal-and value modeling. In: 14th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering, pp. 129–138. IEEE (2006)
Debbiche, J., Strömberg, A., Liao, P.: Applying goal modeling to API ecosystems: a cross-company case study. Bachelor thesis (2017). http://hdl.handle.net/2077/52649
Bedru, F., Freiholtz, M., Mensah, S.: An empirical investigation of the use of goal and process modelling to analyze API ecosystem design and usage workflow. Bachelor thesis (2017). http://hdl.handle.net/2077/52648
Hussein, M., Lundén, A.: An industrial assessment of software framework design: a case study of a rule-based framework. Master’s thesis (2017). https://tinyurl.com/y9td34v6
Harper, M., Cole, P.: Member checking: can benefits be gained similar to group therapy? Qual. Rep. 17(2), 510–517 (2012)
Horkoff, J., Yu, E.: Interactive goal model analysis for early requirements engineering. Requir. Eng. 21(1), 29–61 (2016)
Acknowledgments
Thanks to company contacts and the Chalmers Software Center for support.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Horkoff, J. et al. (2018). Modeling Support for Strategic API Planning and Analysis. In: Wnuk, K., Brinkkemper, S. (eds) Software Business. ICSOB 2018. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 336. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04840-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04840-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-04839-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-04840-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)