A foundational understanding of what microservices are and how they differ from monolithic structures is essential for creating applications, with each service representing a different part of a workflow or process. Microservices architecture enables independent, autonomous software development teams to manage, test, and deploy services without affecting the overall system, making operations more flexible by allowing teams to create their own release cycles and reducing time-to-market. In contrast, monolithic architectures connect all business units into one single stack that shares the same code base, making it difficult to scale separate components independently. Microservices enable teams to scale their entire application and answer customer demands faster with updates that don’t require entire stack overhauls. A key characteristic of microservices is their autonomy, allowing developers to choose the tools, technology, and resources needed to achieve their scope of work within their bounded context. The inter-service communication methods between a monolithic and a microservice architecture are quite different, with microservices being loosely coupled and using different mechanisms such as REST APIs or message queue systems to exchange information. Microservices use synchronous or asynchronous communication, meaning the component waits for a reply (synchronous) or it doesn’t (asynchronous). It's essential to strike the right balance between coupling and autonomy in microservices architecture.