Getting a Handle on Architectural Debt

In March 2023, Amazon.com detailed its decision to shift Prime Video from a microservices architecture to a monolithic architecture using Amazon Elastic Container Service, resulting in a significant reduction in infrastructure costs but sparking debate within the cloud architecture community. This move challenges the typical perception of monoliths as burdensome with technical debt, contrasting with the more favorably viewed microservices. The article delves into the concept of architectural debt, a specialized form of technical debt that can sometimes be a necessary element of software architecture, especially when employing a "just enough, just in time" approach. This strategy involves making minimal architectural decisions early in a project to avoid systemic problems and excessive costs, with the flexibility to adapt architecture in future iterations. The piece distinguishes between good architectural debt, which is strategic and adaptable, and bad architectural debt, which is obsolete and costly, providing examples to illustrate these concepts. It emphasizes the importance of architectural observability tools to manage and modernize architectural debt effectively, illustrating that understanding the nuances of architectural debt is crucial for successful software development and modernization efforts.