The Microservice Dependency Matrix

Microservices have been recognized for over a decade. They reshaped system design enabling decentralization and independence of development teams working on particular microservices. While loosely coupled microservices are desired, it is inevitable for dependencies to arise. However, these dependencies often go unnoticed by development teams. As the system evolves, making changes to one microservice may trigger a ripple effect, necessitating adjustments in dependent microservices and increasing maintenance and operational efforts. Tracking different types of dependencies across microservices becomes crucial in anticipating the consequences of development team changes. This paper introduces the Endpoint Dependency Matrix (EDM) and Data Dependency Matrix (DDM) as tools to address this challenge. We present an automated approach for tracking these dependencies and demonstrate their extraction through a case study.