You are receiving this email because you subscribed to microservices.io.

Considering migrating a monolith to microservices? Struggling with the microservice architecture? I can help: architecture consulting and workshops. Learn more

My Explore DDD conference workshop, April 14-15, 2025, Denver - Designing microservices: responsibilities, APIs and collaborations. Learn more and enroll.

My DDD EU conference workshop, June 2-3, Antwerp, Belgium - Designing microservices: responsibilities, APIs and collaborations. Early bird pricing until March 31, 2025. Learn more and enroll.

Enroll in my distributed data pattterns (aka. service collaboration patterns) self-paced bootcamp. Use coupon RPPPOGHM to sign up for $95 (valid until March 26th, 2025). Learn more and enroll.

Microservices rules #7: Design loosely design-time coupled services - part 1

This is another article in the series about microservices rules: what good looks like, which are a set of principles and practices for using microservices effectively. The articles in the series are:

1. Practice continuous delivery/deployment

2. Implement fast, automated deployment pipelines

3. Apply Team Topologies

4. Provide a great developer experience (DevEx)

5. Use a deliberative design process

6. Design independently deployable services

7. Design loosely coupled services - part 1

8. Design testable services

9. Develop observable services

10. Big/risky change => smaller/safer and (ideally easily) reversible changes - part 1 - incremental architecture modernization, part 2 - continuous deployment, part 3 - canary releases, part 4 - incrementally migrating users, part 5 - smaller user stories

11.Track and improve software metrics and KPIs

Microservices rules #7 is design loosely design-time coupled services. Loose design-time coupling is a defining characteristic of the microservice architecture. Many of the benefits of the microservice architecture are due to loose design-time coupling. But more generally, loose design-time coupling is an essential property of well-designed software, not just microservices.

In this article, I explain the concept of design-time coupling and the related concept of cohesion. You will learn about the benefits of loose design-time coupling. In a follow up article, I will describe how to design loosely design-time coupled software. I also discuss how to detect tight design-time coupling. Let’s start by looking at how a key goal of software design is minimizing design-time coupling and maximizing cohesion.

Read more (This post is for paying subscribers only)

Chris Richardson Consulting, Inc | 180 Rishell Drive, Oakland, CA 94619 Unsubscribe you Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice Sent by chris@chrisrichardson.net powered by Try email marketing for free today!