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 |
A shared frontend forced teams into one release window
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.
Micro-frontends along team boundaries, not technology
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.
Next.js SSR, backend for frontend, own DevOps pipelines
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.
Team and ownership boundaries define the split
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.
Independent delivery per team instead of shared releases
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.
Boundaries by ownership, delivery needs DevOps
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.
A first conversation takes 30 minutes.
We look at whether your frontend architecture matches your team boundaries.