In the world of software development, we love to have strong opinions about architecture. Monoliths are great. Microservices will fix everything. “Micro” is too small, you need macroservices. It goes on and on. How can so many smart people have such wildly different answers? Can it mean anything except that there is no single right answer? In this talk, CircleCI CTO Rob Zuber will discuss why context is everything, how to evaluate your options by returning to first principles, and why you should focus more on transition states than end states. Examples of CircleCI’s own architectural hits and misses will be reviewed with the lucidity of hindsight in order to discuss the decision-making tools and leadership approaches that could have improved the outcomes. Rob Zuber, CTO, CircleCI - Recorded for the twelfth virtual CTO Summit on Tuesday July 28th, 2020 on "Moving to microservices" - https://www.ctoconnection.com/