03Stage 3 of 8 · Options
Which options are appropriate?
Here you compare design options based on their goal fulfillment, costs and risks.
You need
- Shaped modules and boundaries
- Goals and fixed constraints
Who
Payment module owner leads
with Product owner, Platform team
How to proceed
- 1
Collect suitable structural and communication options.
- 2
Compare their consequences against the same goals and targets.
- 3
Examine important uncertainties with targeted experiments.
In the shop
Monolith or separate services?
- Option A
- The modular monolith ships catalogue through to invoice together.
- Option B
- Shipping as its own service; the other six modules stay in the monolith.
- Trade-off
- Autonomy to change, traded against operational and network overhead.
- Starting point
- The monolith is the baseline; services only where autonomy is clearly justified.
This creates
- Compared options
- Reasoned preference
- Open risks
Tools for this:Trade-off analysisArchitecture Decision RecordAll under “Decide” →
Done when
- At least two options are measured against the same goals.
- A preference is recorded with its reasons and consequences.
- Open uncertainties are named and verifiable.
Appropriate Building Blocks
Evolution · ActivityTrade-off analysisA trade-off analysis compares options against competing goals and their consequences.Styles & patterns · StyleModular monolithA modular monolith separates domains within a single application deployed as one unit.Styles & patterns · StyleMicroservicesHere you learn how domain services are developed, deployed and operated independently.Principles · ConceptCouplingCoupling shows which dependencies propagate changes from one building block to others.