Problems in Microservice Development: Supporting Visualisation

In microservice architectures, developers can face significant problems understanding the structure of the system and how the different microservices interact. This difficulty results from the distributed nature of the system, and the abundance of inter-service communication within the architecture. We want to determine if network visualisations can address these problems given their ability to convey complex topologies. However, to identify what architectural characteristics should be visualised, and how this should be done, we must first determine the needs of microservice developers. This paper identifies and presents the impact and frequency of problems faced by a cohort of microservice developers using the results of an online survey. Our findings indicate that the most frequent problems were topology related and the highest impact problems were those related to system faults and data structures. Our results support the use of network visualisations to address microservice development problems and provide context that will allow future visualisations of any type to better address these problems.