What breaks if this service goes down?

Questions CTOs ask

Why is microservices dependency mapping important?

Dependency mapping reveals hidden coupling, circular dependencies, and single points of failure that are not visible from code alone. Without a clear dependency map, teams cannot predict the blast radius of failures, plan safe deployments, or understand which services to prioritize for reliability investment. The more services you have, the less any one person can hold the dependency picture in their head — which is exactly when an unmapped dependency turns a single failure into a cascade.

What are common microservices communication patterns?

The three primary patterns are synchronous request-response (REST/gRPC — simple but creates temporal coupling), asynchronous messaging (event-driven via Kafka/RabbitMQ — decoupled but adds complexity), and choreography vs. orchestration (distributed event reactions vs. centralized workflow coordination). Most mature architectures use a mix: synchronous for queries and user-facing requests, asynchronous for commands and cross-domain events, and orchestration for complex multi-step business processes.