Model Mitosis: Scale software, avoiding legacy monoliths and the microservices trap

Original title: "Model Mitosis: Scale software while avoiding becoming a legacy monolith without falling into the microservices trap" Just as development should be iterative, software design should change when the context and our understanding of the problem evolve. As a software grows to solve more problems, it becomes less supple in its ability to evolve. Tensions arise within the business model of the software that struggles to stay coherent. Eventually it reaches a critical mass and becomes a monolith of spaghetti code. How do we know when it’s time to modularize our software? How do we carry on the decision to split it into several modules or services? How can we handle the progressive differentiation of our business models while avoiding unnecessary coupling? It’s not as easy as a clean axe cut in the middle, finding the right boundaries can be tricky. We would like to introduce the Model Mitosis, a dynamic approach used to split a business model into multiple ones that will get shaped and decoupled iteratively. Gain flexibility to choose better when to split into multiple services, and avoid paying the scale cost of microservices or becoming a distributed monolith.