Case 3: The API imperative to turbo-charging stock broking platform in its growth
You join a growing stock broking company that is wanting to grow its market share by tapping the B2B and B2C market of algorithmic trading. They do this by opening up it API Platform, exposing its large set of APIs as secured RESTful services over the internet. You are hired as an engineering leader responsible for providing best-in-class developer experience by building SDKs for various RESTful APIs, supporting many different programming languages.
Below are snippets of notes you take down talking to various stakeholders in your first week of induction:
CEO: We are at war fighting a do or die battle in a heavily crowded market. We need to get stronger and stronger eating into our competitors market share. We are not resting until we become known as the top 3 players. Let me be clear, I want to see reduction of team size by 10% within 1 month or by 20% within 3 months, to meet the projected numbers by financial year end of March.
CBO: This is untapped market, and I'm betting bing on this and frankly speaking my I don't meet my revenue targets without your team's productive support and delivery. Our customers would want things really really fast. Gear-up for burn-out from time to time.
CFO: Our business runs on thin margins and we profit as we scale the number of business transactions. We really don't have the budget to hire but I am happy to accommodate your request should there be a strong need and you can convince me on it for approval.
CTO: I have way too many things on my plate to run you through things and I am looking forward to your coming up with roadmap for delivery taking out org constraints. Let me know how soon you can come up with this roadmap for discussion.
Given that you have the business and organization context, you are free to spend some time thinking through and learning from internet, to come up with your list of things to do from engineering-side as first step like API doc as first thing. Assume that nothing is done in writing your checklist. We go over it and double-click on select items in your list for detailed understanding on the topic.