When a Monolith Becomes a Problem
We inherited a Laravel 9 SaaS with 180k lines of code and 45-minute deployments. A bug in one area could take down unrelated features.
The Approach: Strangler Fig Migration
We extracted services one at a time — starting with notifications, then payment processing, then user profiles. Each extraction reduced deploy time and improved fault isolation.
Key Lesson
Start with a modular monolith before microservices. You get 80% of the benefits with 20% of the operational complexity.
