# Motivations, Benefits, and Issues for Adopting Micro-Frontends: A Multivocal Literature Review

**Authors:** Severi Peltonen, Luca Mezzalira, Davide Taibi  
**arXiv:** [2007.00293](https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.00293)  
**Date:** 2020-07-01  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/en/arxiv-id/2007.00293v3/

## Key points

- Micro-Frontends are gaining popularity among large companies such as DAZN, Ikea, and Starbucks.
- They allow for the splitting of monolithic frontends into smaller independent micro applications.
- Many companies are hesitant to adopt Micro-Frontends due to a lack of knowledge about their benefits and the perplexed and contradictory online documentation provided.
- The objective of the study was to map existing knowledge on Micro-Frontends by understanding the motivations of companies when adopting them, as well as their possible benefits and issues.
- The study analyzed 43 sources and classified motivations, benefits, and issues through a Multivocal Literature Review.
- Existing architectural options for building web applications become cumbersome when the application and development team grows or if multiple teams need to develop the same frontend application.
- The application of Micro-Frontend confirmed expected benefits such as scaling processes according to business needs in the same way microservices do with backend side development.
- Micro-Frontends also provide cross-functional development teams that can scale processes when needed.
- However, Micro-Frontends also showed some issues such as increased payload size of the application, increased code duplication and coupling between teams, and monitoring complexity.
- Only 3 out of 43 sources were peer-reviewed academic papers while the other 40 were sourced from grey literature (e.g., articles, blog posts, videos, books, podcasts).
- The number of publications on Micro-Frontends has been constantly growing since 2015.
- Despite challenges associated with implementing them successfully in an organization's tech stack architecture; they offer significant advantages over traditional approaches for building web applications.

## Summary

Micro-Frontends are becoming increasingly popular among large companies such as DAZN, Ikea, and Starbucks. They enable the splitting of monolithic frontends into smaller independent micro applications. However, many companies are hesitant to adopt Micro-Frontends due to a lack of knowledge about their benefits and the perplexed and contradictory online documentation provided. The objective of this study was to map existing knowledge on Micro-Frontends by understanding the motivations of companies when adopting them, as well as their possible benefits and issues. The study conducted a Multivocal Literature Review analyzing 43 sources and classifying motivations, benefits, and issues. The results showed that existing architectural options for building web applications become cumbersome when the application and development team grows or if multiple teams need to develop the same frontend application. The application of Micro-Frontend confirmed expected benefits such as scaling processes according to business needs in the same way microservices do with backend side development. Micro-Frontends also provide cross-functional development teams that can scale processes when needed. However, Micro-Frontends also showed some issues such as increased payload size of the application, increased code duplication and coupling between teams, and monitoring complexity. Despite these challenges, Micro-Frontends allow companies to scale development according to business needs in the same way microservices do with backend side development. The study found that only 3 out of 43 sources were peer-reviewed academic papers while the other 40 were sourced from grey literature (e.g., articles, blog posts, videos, books, podcasts). The number of publications on Micro-Frontends has been constantly growing since 2015. In conclusion, this study provides valuable insights into the motivations for adopting Micro-Frontends along with their potential benefits and issues. While there are some challenges associated with implementing them successfully in an organization's tech stack architecture; they offer significant advantages over traditional approaches for building web applications.