Welcome to this summary of the full Abstracted API and Service lifecycle Plan stage. You can download the full whitepaper at the end of this article.
We are releasing a whitepaper for each stage, so be sure to look through each:
- Plan – this article
- Design
- Build to Run
Key definitions and reasoning behind this series
We define APIs as all types of API’s including business capability APIs, facade/experience APIs and 3rd Party APIs and services as everything including microservices and legacy services.
The digitalML version of the lifecycle takes a design-first approach, and focuses on plan, design and build with integration into the run phase (and because the plan, design and build stages are working with an abstraction layer, this is suitable for any runtime environment). We do this because we believe this enables you to become an intelligent enterprise and gain competitive advantage.
Overview: why is the Plan stage so crucial, and how does it work?
The planning phase is the most vital stage of our lifecycle. This is because it is the key to unlocking your large enterprise’s competitive edge. We’re talking about competitive advantage over both incumbents and digital disruptors.
Planning can be broken down into 3 areas:
- Planning for digital products
- Planning for IT modernization
- Planning for building new APIs
Example use cases
*Note to reader: Throughout all the examples in this series we will be assuming that the
enterprise has built an abstraction layer of digitized business functions and are using a platform
like ignite to maintain and extend it.

Value of collaborative planning
Collaborative planning, where business and IT are working as one cohesive team, is the most valuable initiative of the planning phase. Here are the key points which explain why this is so important:
- Enterprise visibility: business and IT are working together in one place, which ensures everyone’s goals and focus are aligned
- Proper prioritization: prevention of development chaos, identifies the most important initiatives to be building for
- Estimation: clear understanding of how long a new product will take to be put to market
- Prevention of repetition and addition to technical debt: you’re not just building things on top of others, where appropriate you’re reusing existing assets properly
Download the full whitepaper
Download the full whitepaper now to:
- Learn more about each planning area (digital products, IT modernization, building new APIs)
- Understand the critical capabilities your enterprise needs for planning success
- Benchmark where your enterprise is in maturity of this approach, and identify the next steps to competitive advantage
- Learn how the ignite platform from digitalML supports the plan stage
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