Monolith vs Microservices
A team-topology decision far more often than a technology one.
5 to work through
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intermediate Multiple choice
A new product, one team of eight, uncertain requirements, ambitious growth plans. Monolith or microservices?
2 min answer -
advanced
A B2B analytics company runs 40 services with 12 engineers. Deploys are independent, but a typical feature touches four services and takes three weeks to reach production. Review this architecture: what would you merge, what would you leave alone, and how would you argue it?
2 min answer -
advanced
A platform must choose between a modular monolith and microservices for a new product line. What evidence should decide it?
1 min answer -
advanced
A team of fifteen wants to start a new product as microservices. How do you advise?
1 min answer -
advanced
You have joined a 55-engineer product organisation with a six-year-old monolith. The VP of Engineering wants a microservices roadmap by Friday. Deploys queue for 40 minutes, the test suite takes 55 minutes, and two candidates recently turned down offers citing the monolith. Walk me through the conversation.
3 min answer
2 terms in this topic
Amazon Prime Video: Serverless Back to a Monolith
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The time it takes for the coordination cost a service extraction removes to repay the one-off extraction cost plus the permanent cost of running one …
Neighbouring topics
Architecture Decision-Making
General material on making and recording architectural decisions.
Architecture Decision Records
One decision, its context, alternatives and consequences, kept immutable.
Reversibility
One-way and two-way doors, and buying optionality deliberately.
Build vs Buy
Differentiation, five-year TCO, and the exit cost of each option.
SQL vs NoSQL
Decided by access patterns and query flexibility, not by data volume.
Sync vs Async
Whether the caller's outcome depends on the callee's response.
Strong vs Eventual Consistency
A per-operation decision, resolved by what a stale read would cost.
Managed vs Self-Managed
Trading control and unit cost against operational attention.
Serverless vs Containers
Spiky and event-driven versus sustained throughput.
Single vs Multi-Region
Driven by RTO, RPO and residency rather than by ambition.
Centralised vs Distributed
Shared platform leverage against team autonomy.
Performance vs Cost
Buying latency, and knowing what the last millisecond is worth.
Reliability vs Complexity
Mechanisms that add availability and add failure modes.
Security vs Usability
Varying control by the value of the action rather than uniformly.
Delivery vs Maintainability
Fast in the cheap places, careful in the expensive ones.
Deciding Under Uncertainty
Bounding the downside and buying information cheaply.
Trade-off Analysis Methods
ATAM, scenarios, and naming the points where qualities conflict.
Technology Selection
Evaluating options against drivers rather than against enthusiasm.
Decision Practice
Thresholds, review, supersession and keeping the log alive.