Micro-Frontends
Independent deployment of UI slices, and the shared runtime that undermines it.
5 to work through
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advanced
A company adopts micro-frontends across many teams. Two years later the product is slower, visually inconsistent and harder to change. What went wrong?
1 min answer -
advanced
A front-end lead proposes micro-frontends so four teams can deploy independently. The application is a single React SPA. What is your assessment?
2 min answer -
advanced
A team proposes micro-frontends. What genuinely justifies them, and what is the usual cost?
1 min answer -
advanced
An organisation is considering micro-frontends so teams can deploy independently. What does this actually require, and when is it the wrong answer?
2 min answer -
advanced Multiple choice
Three teams sharing one web application propose micro-frontends. Assess.
2 min answer
3 terms in this topic
Composed Page Budget
A performance budget enforced on the assembled page rather than per independently-owned fragment - because in a composed frontend nobody owns the tot…
patternMicro-Frontend
Splitting a web interface into independently developed and deployed pieces owned by different teams, composed at build time, server time or runtime.
patternRuntime Composition
Assembling one page from independently deployed fragments at request or render time, which is what makes micro-frontends more than separate builds.
Neighbouring topics
Frontend & Experience Architecture
General material on architecting the surface the user actually touches.
Rendering Strategies
Client, server, static and incremental rendering, and what each costs on first paint.
Edge Rendering
Running the render close to the user, and the personalisation and cache trade it implies.
Hydration Cost
The gap between visible and interactive, and the JavaScript that closes it.
Module Federation
Loading code from another build at runtime, with versioning and failure to think about.
UI Monorepo Strategy
One repository for many front ends, and the build graph that makes it viable.
Design Systems
Components as a versioned internal product, with adoption and deprecation like any API.
Component Contracts
Props, slots and events as an interface, and the breaking change hidden in a style.
Client State Architecture
Server state, UI state and derived state, and why conflating them causes most bugs.
Client Caching & Data Layer
Stale-while-revalidate, invalidation and optimistic updates on the client.
BFF for Experience
One backend per experience, shaped by the screen rather than by the domain.
API Shapes for UI
REST, GraphQL and RPC judged by over-fetching, round trips and client coupling.
Web Performance Budgets
A number a build can fail against, rather than a performance sprint once a year.
Core Web Vitals
LCP, INP and CLS — what they measure, and the architecture that moves them.
Accessibility Architecture
Semantics, focus management and announcements designed in rather than audited in.
Internationalisation
Locale, direction, pluralisation and dates as structural concerns, not string tables.
Client Feature Flags
Flag evaluation on a device you do not control, and the flicker and staleness it brings.
Real User Monitoring
Field data from real devices and networks, against the synthetic run that looked fine.
Frontend Security
CSP, XSS, CSRF, token storage, and the trust boundary that ends at the browser.