Lightspeed Commerce cuts developer onboarding time 20% and API validation time 30% with Postman Collections

Background

Lightspeed's Hospitality team needed consistent API tooling to support an API-first product strategy. Without a single source of truth, developers spent extra time finding APIs, onboarding was inconsistent, and the product manager had no way to validate new API functionality in real time without waiting for formal QA cycles.

What Was Implemented

• Deployed Postman Collections to organize and distribute internal, partner, and public APIs as a single source of truth
• Supplemented existing OpenAPI specs with Postman Collections enabling self-service API discovery
• Used Postman Collection Runner to automate API validation queries, enabling product manager to validate new functionality in real time
• Leveraged Postman's API documentation tools for team collaboration and publishing
• Began planning integration of Postman into a new internal developer portal with CI/CD pipeline integration

Results

Leveraging Postman Collections reduced developer onboarding time by 20% for both internal and external partner developers. The team estimated a 30% reduction in the time required to test and validate new API functionality . Beyond time savings, the approach strengthened API governance, making standards and reference examples visible across distributed teams.

Lessons

• A single source of truth for APIs (via Postman Collections) eliminates fragmentation in onboarding, testing, and governance simultaneously — addressing multiple pain points with one tooling decision
• Real-time validation visibility for product managers (via Collection Runner) shortens the feedback loop between development and QA without requiring engineering resources
• An API-first strategy requires not just a decision but tooling and cultural change; standardizing on a shared platform creates the cultural shift as well as the technical one