The Day We Split a Service That Was Never Meant to Be Whole
Article summary
The Day We Split a Service That Was Never Meant to Be Whole This wasn’t a classic monolith story. We didn’t break apart a massive codebase. We split a small, lean, seemingly fine service-because it was quietly making everything else worse. On paper, the service looked efficient. It handled ingestion, validation, and publishing of partner data. But over time, support escalations grew, incidents multiplied, and dev teams argued constantly over changes. The symptoms pointed in all directions, but the cause turned out to be architectural: we had built a service that conflated three separate behaviors with three incompatible lifecycles into a single deployment unit. Where the Friction Came From Different scaling models Ingestion spiked unpredictably, driven by partner API callbacks. Validation was CPU-heavy and consistent.
Read Full Article on MediumPractical takeaway
The main idea behind The Day We Split a Service That Was Never Meant to Be Whole is to help teams move from broad theory to clear, repeatable decision making. When teams apply this thinking, they reduce ambiguity and focus on improvements that deliver measurable momentum.
Example scenario
Imagine a team facing competing priorities. By applying the ideas in The Day We Split a Service That Was Never Meant to Be Whole, they can map dependencies, identify risks and choose the next move that produces progress without destabilizing their system.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Trying to redesign everything instead of taking small steps.
- Ignoring real constraints like incentives, ownership or legacy systems.
- Creating documents that do not lead to any change in code or decisions.
How to apply this in real work
Start by identifying where The Day We Split a Service That Was Never Meant to Be Whole already shows up in your architecture or delivery flow. Then pick one area where clarity would reduce friction. Apply the idea, measure its effect and share the learning.
Signs you are doing it correctly
- Teams make decisions faster and with fewer disagreements.
- Architectural conversations become clearer and less abstract.
- Changes land safely with fewer surprises or rework cycles.