If you want evidence that the software development industry is susceptible to fashion, just go and take a look at all of the hype around microservices. It's everywhere! For some people microservices is "the next big thing", whereas for others it's simply a lightweight evolution of the big service-oriented architectures that we saw 10 years ago "done right". Microservices is by no means a silver bullet though, and the design thinking required to create a good microservices architecture is the same as that needed to create a well structured monolith. And this begs the question that if you can’t build a well-structured monolith, what makes you think microservices is the answer? Simon Brown is an independent consultant and helps organisations to build better software by adopting a lightweight, pragmatic approach to software architecture. He is the creator of the C4 software architecture model and the author of Software Architecture for Developers - a developer-friendly guide to software architecture, technical leadership and the balance with agility. Simon lives in Jersey (the largest of the Channel Islands) and his client list spans over 20 countries, including organisations ranging from small technology startups through to global household names. He still codes too. [JGN-0641]