Design services that are cohesive, testable, and evolvable

Intentional service design establishes clear responsibilities, avoids chatty integrations, and empowers teams to deploy safely and frequently.

Capture the core responsibilities, dependencies, and quality attributes that define the service contract. Use the canvas to align product and engineering expectations.

Service responsibility canvas outlining capabilities, inputs, and outputs
Collaboratively document inputs, outputs, quality SLAs, and integration patterns.

Interface design checklist

Consumer empathy

  • Document the top three consumer journeys that rely on the service.
  • Provide clear versioning rules and deprecation timelines.
  • Offer reference clients or contract tests for high-risk integrations.
Favor API designs that express intent, hide persistence concerns, and shield consumers from internal refactors.

Quality attributes

Define the non-functional requirements that matter most to the service. Prioritize them early to avoid costly rework.

Quality attribute radar chart covering latency, throughput, resilience, security, and cost
Plot the target profile and annotate supporting patterns or platform capabilities.
With responsibilities defined, shape the edge contracts in the API Gateway playbook to keep consumers safe and productive.