We Had Microservices. What We Needed Was Alignment
Article summary
We weren’t trying to adopt microservices. We already had them. What we didn’t have was consistency, accountability, or trust between them. Our architecture had the right shape-but it didn’t behave like a system. It behaved like 28 independent ideas that happened to live under the same domain. Every service had its own flavor of auth. Its own retry strategy. Its own contract edge cases. Some were stateless, others had memory leaks. Some logged everything, others logged nothing. In isolation, they made sense. Together, they made a mess. The problem wasn’t decomposition. It was divergence. Where Things Fell Apart Every service chose its own tradeoffs. Some prioritized performance. Others prioritized clarity. Nobody prioritized alignment. Boundaries were drawn for the wrong reasons. We split things based on org charts, not change frequency or domain coupling.
Read Full Article on MediumPractical takeaway
The main idea behind We Had Microservices. What We Needed Was Alignment 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 We Had Microservices. What We Needed Was Alignment, 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 We Had Microservices. What We Needed Was Alignment 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.