microservices-analyst

---
name: microservices-analyst
description: |
license: MIT
---

# Microservices Analyst

## When to Use

- Inventory an **existing** microservice estate (services, APIs, owners, runtimes, repos)
- Map **dependencies and coupling** (sync call chains, fan-in/out, shared DBs, shared libraries)
- Assess **observability and SLO** coverage, alert quality, and on-call pain per service
- Find **deployment and version skew** (stale images, drifted configs, multi-version consumers)
- Detect **API and contract drift** (OpenAPI/AsyncAPI vs reality, breaking consumers, schema lag)
- Quantify **operational toil** (manual runbooks, ticket volume, change failure rate proxies)
- Score **security blast radius** (critical paths, over-privileged service accounts, secrets sprawl)
- Recommend **consolidation, strangler slices, or decomposition** with evidence—not opinion alone
- Deliver **platform/SRE/architect** summaries with prioritized hotspots and next owners

## When NOT to Use

- Greenfield **boundary research**, bounded contexts, or ADR options only → `microservice-researcher`
- Implement or refactor production service code, handlers, or deployables → `senior-software-engineer`, `microservices-developer`
- Kubernetes cluster ops, node tuning, or cloud landing zones without estate analysis → `cloud-engineer`, `infrastructure-engineer`
- Pure load-test design and execution without estate-wide dependency context → `performance-engineer`
- Broker/outbox implementation or stream processing build → `event-driven-architecture`
- Enterprise portfolio strategy unrelated to operational estate health → `enterprise-strategist`

## Related skills

| Need | Skill |
|---|---|
| Greenfield decomposition, strangler research, ADR options | `microservice-researcher` |
| Estate-wide ADRs, C4, cross-system NFR sign-off | `senior-system-architecture` |
| IDP, golden paths, paved roads for remediation | `platform-engineer` |
| SLO design, error budgets, incident and on-call programs | `site-reliability-engineer` |
| Load testing, latency tuning, capacity experiments | `performance-engineer` |
| Event contracts, brokers, outbox (when building fixes) | `event-driven-architecture` |
| IaC, cluster delivery, cloud foundations | `infrastructure-engineer`, `cloud-engineer` |
| Service implementation and twelve-factor deployables | `senior-software-engineer`, `microservices-developer` |
| Rollout, cutover, and rollback tactics for remediation | `deployment-strategist` |

## Core Workflows

### 1. Scope the estate and stakeholders

Define analysis boundary (product line, region, cluster namespace, business capability), data sources, and audience (exec brief vs engineering backlog). List non-goals and hand off greenfield design to `microservice-researcher` when appropriate.

**See `references/microservices_analyst_scope.md`.**

### 2. Build service inventory and dependency map

Catalog services, APIs, events, data stores, owners, and environments. Produce dependency graph with sync/async edges, critical paths, and orphan or zombie services.

**See `references/service_inventory_and_dependency_analysis.md`.**

### 3. Assess coupling and data ownership

Flag chatty sync chains, cyclic dependencies, shared-database antipatterns, and unclear aggregate ownership. Tie findings to change risk and test burden.

**See `references/coupling_and_data_ownership.md`.**

### 4. Review observability, SLOs, and operational health

Map golden signals and SLO coverage per tier-1 service; note alert noise, missing traces, and deployment frequency vs incident correlation.

**See `references/observability_slo_and_operational_health.md`.**

### 5. Audit API contracts and version drift

Compare published contracts to runtime behavior; list breaking consumers, deprecated fields still in use, and skew across regions/clusters.

**See `references/api_contracts_and_version_drift.md`.**

### 6. Prioritize risks and recommendations

Synthesize consolidation candidates, strangler slices, decomposition triggers, and security blast-radius hotspots with evidence links. Close with executive summary and owned next steps.

**See `references/consolidation_risk_and_recommendations.md`.**

## Principles

- **Analyze what exists**—inventory and metrics before recommending new boundaries
- **Evidence over opinion**—every hotspot cites a dependency edge, metric, contract diff, or incident pattern
- **Separate research from remediation**—hand greenfield ADRs to `microservice-researcher`; implementation to engineering peers
- **Tier services**—not every pod deserves the same SLO depth; focus tier-1 paths first
- **Make blast radius visible**—critical paths and shared fate drive prioritization

## When to load references

| Topic | Reference |
|---|---|
| Scope, inputs, deliverables | `references/microservices_analyst_scope.md` |
| Inventory and dependency mapping | `references/service_inventory_and_dependency_analysis.md` |
| Coupling and data ownership | `references/coupling_and_data_ownership.md` |
| Observability, SLOs, ops health | `references/observability_slo_and_operational_health.md` |
| Contracts and version drift | `references/api_contracts_and_version_drift.md` |
| Consolidation, risk, recommendations | `references/consolidation_risk_and_recommendations.md` |