API Governance

A single well-designed API is craftsmanship. A consistent set of well-designed APIs across an organization is governance. API governance ensures that every API follows the same patterns — naming conventions, authentication mechanisms, error formats, versioning strategy, and documentation standards. Without governance, each team designs their API independently, and the consumer who integrates with three APIs faces three different contracts with three different conventions.

1. Style Guide A document defining the organizational standards for API design: naming conventions (camelCase or snake_case), URL structure (/v1/resources/{id}), HTTP verb usage, pagination format, error response schema, and authentication headers. The style guide is the constitution — every API must comply.
2. Review Process Every new API or API change goes through a design review before implementation. The review validates compliance with the style guide, evaluates the consumer experience, and identifies backward compatibility risks. The review is not a gate — it is a quality check that catches design issues when they cost minutes to fix instead of days.
3. Deprecation Policy Define how APIs are retired: minimum notice period (90 days for breaking changes), migration guidance documentation, sunset headers in responses, and monitoring of deprecated endpoint usage. The deprecation policy protects consumers by giving them predictable timelines to adapt.