Evaluating Microservice Organizational Coupling based on Cross-service Contribution

TL;DR

This paper introduces an automated method to evaluate organizational coupling in microservice architectures by analyzing cross-service contributions and ownership, aiming to identify and mitigate coupling issues that can lead to technical debt.

Contribution

It presents a novel, automatable approach to assess organizational coupling in microservices based on cross-service contribution analysis, addressing a gap in current evaluation methods.

Findings

Effective detection of organizational coupling issues

Potential to reduce technical debt and managerial costs

Improved understanding of cross-service dependencies

Abstract

For traditional modular software systems, "high cohesion, low coupling" is a recommended setting while it remains so for microservice architectures. However, coupling phenomena commonly exist therein which are caused by cross-service calls and dependencies. In addition, it is noticeable that teams for microservice projects can also suffer from high coupling issues in terms of their cross-service contribution, which can inevitably result in technical debt and high managerial costs. Such organizational coupling needs to be detected and mitigated in time to prevent future losses. Therefore, this paper proposes an automatable approach to evaluate the organizational couple by investigating the microservice ownership and cross-service contribution.