From Monolith to Microservices: A Practical Migration Roadmap

The strangler fig pattern is the most battle-tested approach to migrating a monolith to microservices incrementally, without a risky big-bang rewrite. Named after the tropical tree that slowly envelops and replaces its host tree, it allows you to build new functionality as services while gradually replacing existing monolith functionality.

Start at the Edge, Not the Core

Extract the services that have the clearest boundaries, the fewest internal dependencies, and the highest rate of change first. Notifications, authentication, and reporting are common starting points.