Modular Monoliths: A happy middle

In this session we will discuss what modular monoliths are, what they bring to the table, and how they offer a great middle ground between monoliths and distributed architectures like microservices.

Monoliths get a bad rep. Experienced software developers have seen one too many monoliths devolve into a big ball of mud, leaving everyone frustrated, with an itch to do a “rewrite”. But monoliths have their pros! They are usually simpler, easier to understand, and faster to build and debug.

On the other side of the spectrum you have microservices—that offer scale, both technically and organizationally, as well as having the badge of honor of being “the new cool kid on the block”. But productionizing microservices is HARD.

Why can't we have our cake and eat it too? Turns out, we can. In this session we will explore the modular monolith—all the upsides of a monolith with none of the downsides of distributed architectures. We'll see what it means to build a modular monolith, and how that differs from a traditional layered architecture. We will discuss how we can build architectural governance to ensure our modules remain decoupled. Finally we'll see how our modules can communicate with one another without violating modularity.

By the end of this session you'll walk away with a greater appreciation for the monolith, and see how you can leverage this within your system architecture.