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World Congress 2021 • Jun 28, 2021

Monoliths: A love story

Adam Mullen , John Collins

Think microservices are the only way to scale? Learn why keeping your monorepo and embracing an inner-sourcing model solves architectural gridlock without creating organizational walled gardens.

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#1 about 4 min

Managing engineering hyper-growth and team expansion

Scaling from a small startup to a massive organization introduces complex collaboration challenges.

#2 about 2 min

Growing pains in a shared single repository

As more teams contribute to a single codebase, coordination issues and conflicting features begin to emerge.

#3 about 2 min

Benefits of starting with monolithic architectures

Monoliths provide lower overhead, easier testing, and simpler onboarding for early-stage and co-located teams.

#4 about 2 min

Scaling challenges in large legacy codebases

Victims of their own success, massive monoliths lead to complex interactions and sub-optimizations among growing teams.

#5 about 3 min

Addressing increased lead times and delayed delivery

Slowing deployment speeds negatively impact both business goals and the daily motivation of software engineers.

#6 about 2 min

Measuring team health with deployment and meeting metrics

Tracking sync meetings, planning sessions, and deployment rollbacks helps visualize the effectiveness of team collaboration.

#7 about 3 min

The downsides of strict team code ownership

Assigning strict ownership can result in walled gardens, conventional drift, and negative protectionism among developers.

#8 about 2 min

Why microservices cannot guarantee true code modularity

While microservices limit individual scope, they can actually make poor modularity much more painful to manage.

#9 about 3 min

Prioritizing engineering culture over immediate architectural changes

Conway's law indicates that engineering culture and communication patterns will override forced changes to system architecture.

#10 about 3 min

Bringing the engineers to the problem domain

Forming small, targeted groups around specific issues aligns communication structures with the desired software outcomes.

#11 about 3 min

Adopting an inner-sourcing model for shared maintenance

Treating teams as maintainers rather than owners allows anyone to contribute while preserving overall code quality.

#12 about 3 min

Finding the right scope for engineering experiments

Process improvements should target visible tasks requiring a few sprints to balance motivation and execution difficulty.

#13 about 2 min

Cross-domain collaboration without extensive upfront planning

Bringing explicit domains together avoids prolonged planning cycles and directly addresses complex service integrations.

#14 about 3 min

Using the scientific method for agile process control

Treat organizational changes as spikes with clear hypotheses to gather data and confirm or pivot efficiently.

#15 about 3 min

Scaling successful communication changes to reduce overall risk

Regular retrospectives and deliberate iteration help spread positive communication habits and minimize broad organizational exposure.

#16 about 3 min

Practical tips for maintaining code quality during transitions

Focus on creating clear documentation, writing deletable code, and testing improvements safely in offline environments.

#17 about 4 min

Prioritizing modularity over the monolith versus microservices debate

Whether using monoliths or microservices, deliberate decoupling and collaborative maintenance are the true keys to success.

#18 about 7 min

Approaches to documentation, team size, and new onboarding

Clear definitions of done, manageable team capacities, and pairing systems ensure smoother operations and faster integration.

Matching moments

3:18 min

Transitioning from a monolith to a microservice architecture

Aleksandr Kalikov · LIVE

2:34 min

The challenge of preventing modular monoliths from degrading

Christoph Kober Christoph Kober · WWC Europe 2026

5:06 min

Modernizing legacy applications through proactive leadership

Babette Wagner Babette Wagner · Coffee With Developers

2:23 min

Restructuring the operating model for software engineering

Parag Parekh · WWC 2022

5:08 min

Overcoming challenges of scaling legacy monolithic frontend applications

Josh Goldberg · WWC 2021

3:41 min

Technical debt and tangled architecture of the legacy monolith

Hendrik Lösch Hendrik Lösch · WWC 2024

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