Architecture Decisions: Scenario-Based Questions

Choosing the right architecture early can accelerate development or create long-term complexity. Most startups benefit from starting with a modular monolith before moving to microservices.

🏗️ Monolith: Why It’s Often the Right Start

• Simplicity: Easier to deploy, debug, and manage with a single codebase and deployment pipeline.
• Speed: Faster to build features and iterate without worrying about distributed systems.
• Lower Overhead: No need for service discovery, centralized logging, or complex orchestration early on.
• Consistent Data Access: Single database access without transactional complexity or eventual consistency.

📦 Microservices: When It Makes Sense

• Clear Domain Boundaries: Teams are large enough to own services independently.
• Scalability Needs: Specific parts of the system require independent scaling or availability.
• Long-Term Maintenance: Business domains evolve independently and deployment coordination becomes painful.

🧭 Migration Path

• Start with a modular monolith — well-structured modules that could become services later.
• Extract services based on operational bottlenecks (e.g., billing, search, analytics).
• Use APIs or internal adapters to simulate service boundaries within the monolith.

✅ Best Practices

• Design for separation of concerns even in a monolith.
• Logically group code by domain or feature.
• Keep database schemas modular and normalized.

🚫 Common Mistakes

• Adopting microservices too early without ops maturity.
• Breaking things into services with no clear reason or need for scaling.
• Creating tight coupling between services, defeating the purpose.

📌 Real-World Insight

Startups like Basecamp, GitHub, and Stripe started with monoliths — and only moved to microservices when scale demanded it. Clear code boundaries and decoupling habits enable smoother transitions when needed.