Modular Monoliths in Practice: A Middle Ground for Growing Product Teams
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63282/3050-9246.IJETCSIT-V3I4P106Keywords:
Modular Monoliths, Software Architecture, Microservices, Domain-Driven Design, Refactoring, Monolithic Systems, ModularizationAbstract
In the contemporary landscape of software development, the debate between monolithic and microservices architecture continues to dominate technical discourse. This paper explores Modular Monoliths as a pragmatic and scalable alternative to traditional microservices for product teams that are expanding rapidly. While microservices promise scalability and autonomy, they introduce substantial complexity in orchestration, deployment, and operational overhead, particularly for mid-sized organizations or those in early product maturity stages. Modular monoliths allow developers to embrace the core benefits of modular design and separation of concerns without incurring the full overhead of distributed systems. This paper presents a deep dive into architectural patterns, refactoring strategies, domain-driven modularization, and tooling techniques that facilitate scalable modular monoliths. We examine real-world use cases and industry experiences to validate this architecture as a suitable middle ground for growing product teams. The work further details the systematic methodology, including domain decomposition, interface enforcement, module boundaries, and integration tests. A case study of an e-commerce platform demonstrates our approach, followed by comparative evaluations against microservices and traditional monoliths across dimensions such as deployment complexity, development velocity, and maintainability. Quantitative metrics reveal significant gains in cohesion, reduced latency in inter-module calls, and improved developer experience. Ultimately, this paper contributes practical insights, a reference methodology, and actionable guidelines for adopting modular monoliths as a strategic stepping stone towards eventual service-based evolution
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References
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