OVO decreases the time to launch a new service from 2 weeks to 2 days with Postman

OVO's backend developers had been building APIs using several platforms, including the free version of Postman, Google Docs, Swagger, and Apiary. Clients were then obliged to accept APIs built on a variety of platforms.

“The Postman API Platform is the whole package. You can manage your API across its entire lifecycle from designing and building to maintenance, all in one place.”

Putu Kusmawan, Software Engineer at OVO

Regarding API documentation, various formats and tools were used, including Google Docs and Confluence. This led to either unnecessary information being added or details being missed.

Collaboration was difficult with APIs dispersed in many locations. Developers would import and export their Postman Collections, but environment variables were not exported or updated.

It was impossible to have a centralized dashboard that provided effective management. Discovering APIs for individual projects was troublesome. There was no consistency in API standards or code quality. And losing links was inevitable as APIs were shared using Slack or emails.

There was also a need for API contract confidentiality to control the exposure of sensitive data. Another security concern was access management to ensure former employees' access could be revoked.

Developers built mock servers from scratch, and often there was a glitch or the server failed.

When it came to testing, a script was written, and then backend developers would turn to the QA team to build the test. Testing was a manual process.

Building services with new sets of APIs would take at least two weeks, depending on the complexity of the API. The platforms and tools used to build APIs required coding knowledge, which meant product managers could not use them.

Upgrading to a paid Postman plan was a natural choice as OVO's backend developers were among the 35 million worldwide users of Postman.

Choosing Postman opened API work to the entire company, as coding knowledge was no longer a pre-requisite. Once an API contract is decided, it now takes a few clicks for all steps to be completed.

Using Postman's mock API servers has accelerated integration implementation. Frontend and backend developers can work in parallel using mock servers. With API contracts and mock servers, it is possible to see requests and responses easily.

“Postman has definitely increased developer happiness. Since using Postman, we have greater harmony between frontend and backend developers.”

Romin Adi Santoso, Head Of Engineering at OVO

Elsewhere, testing has been automated. Backend developers can build and independently enrich test cases. And Identifying server anomalies in change requests are among the many uses of Postman tests.

API standardization has been revolutionized by Postman API documentation. Developers have the relevant information for each API. Everything is kept up-to-date and information can be shared easily as it is all in one place. Additionally, with this API visibility, it is possible to implement API governance.

Postman workspaces have enabled effective API management. Now, one developer is responsible for maintaining a service and updating the collection. Additionally, workspaces have resulted in APIs being easy to discover and access. There are fewer steps involved in sharing, which has improved the developer experience.

The time to launch a service with new APIs has been reduced from two weeks to two days. A clear indication that developer productivity has been significantly enhanced.

Confidence in releasing new changes to the production environment has been increased through Postman tests. Time and resources are no longer being spent building mock servers or manually writing tests.

There are no longer issues related to API contracts not matching the results of API development. By using Postman, this friction has been eliminated.

“Postman has made it easy to work with different teams internally and externally to perfect our APIs.”

Putu Kusmawan, Software Engineer at OVO

Collaboration has improved substantially by using workspaces and defining roles around collections. API documentation is easy to access, which has enabled API standardization. There is now clear API visibility and discoverability, with everything API-related being on the intrinsically intuitive Postman platform.

In the near future, OVO will add licenses as it continues leveraging Postman's automation capabilities. There are also plans to integrate collections into the CI/CD pipeline and use Postman monitors.