APIs are Arrangements of Power. Now what?
summary
Capital One runs a platform CoE for ~9–10k developers producing thousands of APIs and seeing 3.5 billion requests and responses a day, and claims API strategy must be socio-technical not just technical. Cites Conway’s Law and the inverse Conway maneuver — Bezos’ 2003 API edict that forced AWS-style modularization and Buffer’s reorg from two monoliths into product-aligned teams as concrete wins. Recommends tactics: shrink the change and “script the critical moves,” plus reading Accelerate, Team Topologies, Thinking in Systems.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Intro
- 4:53The Power of Organizations
- 10:52APIs are Arrangements of Power
- 14:13The inverse conway maneuver
- 16:04Change in organizations
- 21:14What is API governance
- 22:21Books
- 23:15Questions
- 26:04Conways Law
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