Projects

Web Architecture: Microfrontends

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April 15, 2024
At Vodafone, we set out to modernize our digital infrastructure by upgrading from outdated legacy systems to a more modern, modular, and scalable architecture. The goal was to streamline our web development workflows, reduce technical debt, and accelerate the delivery of digital products across teams. By adopting a modular architecture, we empowered teams to develop and deploy features independently across multiple applications. This shift not only improved scalability but also allowed for faster iteration cycles, enhanced collaboration, and more efficient parallel development. The transition to this modern architecture has significantly increased development efficiency, reduced the time-to-market for new features, and laid a solid foundation for future innovations at Vodafone.
  • Independent Project Deliveries: Led the design and implementation of a horizontally scaled microfrontend architecture, enabling separate project deliveries without blocking teams from working on their respective features. Each microfrontend was designed to operate independently, ensuring that teams could focus on their specific domains without dependencies on other teams' progress.
  • Dedicated CI/CD Pipelines: Established and maintained dedicated CI/CD pipelines for each microfrontend, ensuring that only the affected applications were deployed during updates. This approach minimized deployment risks, reduced downtime, and streamlined the release process.
  • Faster Go-to-Live: These improvements resulted in faster go-to-live times for new features, empowering teams to deliver value to users more quickly and respond to business needs with greater flexibility and speed.
  • Nx Workspaces: For managing the monorepo and optimizing build processes.
  • React and Next.js: Utilized for building scalable, high-performance user interfaces with a strong focus on SEO.
  • TypeScript: For type-safe development and improved maintainability.
  • TailwindCSS: For creating a consistent and customizable design system.
  • Vitest and Cypress: For unit and end-to-end testing to ensure code quality.
  • React Query & Zustand: For efficient state management and data fetching.
  • Adobe Experience Manager & Contentful: Leveraged as headless CMS platforms to deliver flexible, structured content across multiple channels.
One of the biggest challenges was transitioning from legacy systems to a microfrontend architecture without disrupting ongoing development. This required careful planning, incremental migration, and close collaboration between teams. Another challenge was ensuring seamless integration between microfrontends while maintaining independence. The use of Nx Workspaces proved invaluable in addressing these challenges. Additionally, the migration highlighted the importance of robust communication and documentation practices. Clear guidelines and shared understanding among teams were critical to ensuring a smooth transition and avoiding misalignment during the migration process. The project also emphasized the value of investing in developer experience. By providing tools, templates, and automation scripts, the teams were able to reduce repetitive tasks and focus on delivering high-quality features. The new architecture has significantly enhanced modularity and accelerated feature deployment. Teams can now work independently on different parts of the application, reducing bottlenecks and improving overall productivity. The transition from legacy systems has increased development efficiency and shortened the time-to-market for new features, demonstrating the value of modern architectural practices in large-scale web development.
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