API Deprecation & Migration Experience Survey

Welcome to the API Deprecation & Migration Experience Survey. This survey explores your experience with API or platform deprecations, including timeline fairness, guidance quality, and migration effort. Your responses will help improve how deprecations are communicated and managed. Participation is entirely voluntary, and you may stop at any time. There are no right or wrong answers — we are interested in your honest opinions. All responses are confidential and will be reported only in aggregate. Estimated time: 6–8 minutes.

When did you most recently encounter an API or platform deprecation that affected your work?

• In the last 30 days
• 31–90 days ago
• 3–6 months ago
• 7–12 months ago
• Over 12 months ago
• I have not encountered one

Who initiated the deprecation you most recently experienced?

• Cloud platform provider
• SaaS or API vendor
• Open-source project maintainers
• Internal team at my company
• Hardware/device vendor
• Not sure

Was a specific removal or sunset date provided for the deprecation?

• Yes, a specific date
• No, only general timing (e.g., 'later this year')
• Not sure / wasn't stated

Approximately how many weeks of advance notice were you given before the deprecation took effect?

• Less than 1 week
• 1–2 weeks
• 3–4 weeks
• 5–8 weeks
• 9–12 weeks
• 13–26 weeks (3–6 months)
• More than 26 weeks (6+ months)
• Not sure

Overall, how fair was the deprecation timeline you experienced?

What is the minimum number of weeks of advance notice you consider fair for breaking API changes?

• Less than 1 week
• 1–2 weeks
• 3–4 weeks
• 5–8 weeks
• 9–12 weeks
• 13–26 weeks (3–6 months)
• More than 26 weeks (6+ months)

How clear was the deprecation guidance you received (e.g., migration documentation, changelogs)?

How would you rate the clarity of step-by-step migration instructions?

How would you rate the quality of code examples or migration guides provided?

How would you rate the completeness of the breaking-changes documentation?

How much effort did the migration require for your codebase?

Rank the following pain points from most to least impactful during your deprecation and migration experience.

1. Understanding what changed
2. Planning the migration timeline
3. Refactoring code
4. Updating dependencies
5. Testing and validation
6. Coordinating across teams

Where did you first learn about the deprecation?

• Email notification
• In-product banner or console
• Release notes or changelog
• API response headers or warnings
• Documentation site
• Social media or community post
• Colleague or internal announcement
• I don't recall

After this deprecation experience, how did your trust in the vendor or provider change?

What is your primary role?

• Backend engineer
• Frontend engineer
• Full-stack engineer
• Mobile engineer
• DevOps / SRE
• Data / ML engineer
• Architect
• Engineering manager
• Product manager
• Other

How many years of professional software development experience do you have?

• Less than 1
• 1–3
• 4–6
• 7–10
• 11–15
• 16+

Approximately how many employees does your organization have?

• 1–10
• 11–50
• 51–200
• 201–1,000
• 1,001–5,000
• 5,001–10,000
• 10,001+

Which region are you primarily based in?

• North America
• Latin America
• Europe
• Middle East
• Africa
• East Asia
• South Asia
• Southeast Asia
• Oceania
• Prefer not to say

Based on your responses in this survey, what would make deprecation timelines and guidance clearer and fairer for you?

We'd like to explore your deprecation experience in a bit more depth. An AI moderator will ask a couple of follow-up questions based on your earlier responses.

Thank you for your time — your feedback will directly inform how we improve deprecation practices and developer experience.