Defining the stages of the API life cycle

Now that we've learned about the benefits of a well-structured API life cycle process, let’s dive a little deeper into its structure. As mentioned previously, the API life cycle consists of several stages. You may have seen this division in various places and noticed that it may differ between places and people. The number, naming, and other aspects of the stages are arbitrary and depend on the focus of the program. For example, we're focusing on the design phase and the governance processes, while some organizations or teams may focus on observability and testability. In this book, we'll be using a six-step process, starting with design and finishing with updating. This is an iterative loop and ends with a one-time additional step – retirement. This book will focus almost exclusively on two phases – design and update – while providing some important comments on other stages, which either are results...