Transitioning to a Microservices Architecture - Part 1

Transitioning to a Microservice Architecture – Part 1

By Rubens Gomes

I had the opportunity to serve as a technical lead during the implementation of the microservices architecture for the American Airlines Ticketing department from 2016 to 2023. The Ticketing department is responsible for the booking and payment processing of over 700,000 airline tickets daily. The company’s IT transformation began around 2017, and the ticketing team was among the first to have microservices running in production.

Transitioning to a microservice architecture involves significant changes—not only to the technical architecture and continuous integration/delivery pipelines, but also to the organizational culture and team dynamics. In a microservice architecture, teams become more independent and self-organized, each responsible for a specific part of the business domain. These teams develop deep expertise in their respective sub-domains and take full ownership of development, deployment, and production support.

In addition to these structural and organizational changes, a successful transition to microservices requires several critical foundational components. In future parts, I’ll elaborate on these elements and explain why they are essential for effectively implementing a microservices architecture.

Stay tuned for the next edition of "Transitioning to a Microservices Architecture – Part 2". I have much more to share on this topic, as I had the unique opportunity to witness—and help shape—a real-world microservices implementation from the ground up in a very large enterprise.