E-Commerce, Munich
Micro-Frontends Along Team Lines, Not Technical Ones
Several teams worked on a shared frontend. We fitted the architecture to their actual areas of responsibility.
| Industry | E-Commerce |
|---|---|
| Services | Tech Transformation |
Situation
Several teams worked on a shared frontend at an e-commerce company in Munich. Every change had to be coordinated through a shared release, regardless of which team had built it.
Task
As software architect, a micro-frontend architecture was to be built that lets teams ship their part independently, with Next.js SSR for performance and SEO, a backend-for-frontend as a decoupling layer, and the matching DevOps pipeline.
Implementation
Micro-frontend architecture
Split the frontend along team and domain boundaries.
Next.js SSR
Server-side rendering for performance and search-engine friendliness.
Backend-for-frontend
Decouples the individual micro-frontends from the backend services.
DevOps pipeline
Independent deployments per micro-frontend instead of one shared release cadence.
Team guidelines
Clear ownership of which team owns which part of the frontend.
Approach
The starting point was not the technology but the question of where the actual team and ownership boundaries ran. The split of the frontend followed those boundaries, not an arbitrary technical division.
Next.js SSR kept performance and search-engine friendliness intact across the split. The backend-for-frontend layer made sure no micro-frontend depended directly on the details of the backend services. Only with its own DevOps pipeline per micro-frontend did independent delivery become practically possible.
Result
Teams now ship their part of the frontend independently instead of coordinating a shared release window. The architecture reflects who is responsible for what, rather than being just a technical split.
Transferable lessons
Draw boundaries by ownership
Micro-frontends work when they follow team boundaries, not when they are meant to create them.
A backend-for-frontend makes the split workable
Without this layer, the frontend split stays only superficial.
Independent delivery needs its own DevOps
Architecture alone does not ship independently. The pipeline has to keep pace.
First conversation: 30 minutes, concrete.
We look at whether your frontend architecture matches your team boundaries.