Determining Where to Start

Before we jump into designing our microservices and breaking down the business domain, let’s first pause to think about whether or not we should start with microservice architecture or plan to eventually work our way to it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a monolithic architecture for the right project today, and sometimes it’s a good place to start. It might even be the case that we can start somewhere in between. A microservices architecture has an up-front cost that can slow the initial release and make it more difficult to get to a minimum viable product quickly, especially in a startup situation. The other thing to consider is the current and future size of the team and the application. If the application is not going to scale to a size that it makes it worthwhile, then we might want to reconsider a microservices approach. Do we have the skills and necessary DevOps practices in place to make it successful? What skills and practices are needed and when can we get them? These are all things we need to consider.