Microservices are vertical slices of functionality independent from one another in terms of technologies, paradigms and to some extent also data. As it is an isolated module, a microservice can be easily replaced or entirely rewritten or just scaled horizontally without the risk of regression in case of need. Multiple microservices interact in a loosely coupled manner participating to a distributed architecture but being fully usable on their own. Honestly, this design has very few cons and quite a few pros. And more importantly, it is much more common than expected. It’s simply the name given to all running solutions that for some reasons are not falling in the realm of well-architected, comprehensive systems. Nearly any system is a collection of microservices. In this talk, I’ll share some painful personal experience that resulted from the building of the infrastructure for a company in multiple steps, with limited resources, adding—like a family would do—one piece after the next trying not to lose track of the existing. Come and hear how to rename and leverage the mess you have around to take some concrete functional benefits.