Case Study: The All-Hands Meeting That Went Viral (For the Wrong Reasons)

Let’s consider a small case study which explains how bad naming microservices could create a chaos. It was supposed to be a routine all-hands update. John, a senior engineering lead at a fast-growing fintech startup, stood up to demo a new feature built by his team. “We’ve integrated Project Athena with our billing pipeline,” he began confidently.

Then the Zoom chat exploded.

“What’s Project Athena?”
“Is this related to the fraud detection service?”
“Wait, isn’t Athena the internal HR tool?”

John paused. Five excruciating minutes later, he’d barely scratched the surface: “Well, Athena is our… um, it’s not HR-related. It’s technically the rebranded version of the legacy payment reconciliation system, but now it also handles refunds and… actually, let me just share a diagram.”

The damage was done.

Later, a junior engineer admitted: “I thought Athena was the data team’s ML model. I’ve been pinging the wrong Slack channel for weeks.”

This wasn’t just a bad meeting—it was a symptom of a systemic naming crisis. In a company with 150+ microservices, vague or inconsistent naming had turned the architecture into a tangled web of confusion, wasted time, and duplicated efforts.

Why Naming Microservices Is a Leadership Problem

Naming isn’t a “developer quirk”—it’s a scaling and communication challenge. Poorly named services:

• Create organizational silos (Teams guard “their” services because no one else understands them).
• Multiply tech debt (Developers build new services rather than reuse existing ones they can’t find).
• Slow onboarding (New hires spend weeks decoding what OrchestratorServiceV2 actually does).

As John learned, the cost of bad names compounds at scale. Here’s how to fix it.

7 Strategies for Naming Microservices Without Losing Your Mind

1. Adopt a Domain-Driven Naming Convention

The Problem: Teams name services based on internal jargon (“Let’s call it Titan because it’s powerful!”) rather than business capabilities.

The Fix: Use ubiquitous language from your business domain.

• Bad: ProjectPhoenix, OrchestratorService
• Good: LoanApprovalWorkflow, FraudDetectionAPI

Why it works: Aligns service names with what stakeholders actually call them. If the sales team says “customer onboarding,” your service shouldn’t be named InitFlow.

Pro Tip: Publish a domain glossary and treat it as a living document.

2. Enforce Namespace Prefixes

The Problem: NotificationService could belong to the payments team, marketing team, or DevOps. Chaos ensues.

The Fix: Use prefixes to group services by domain or team.

• Example: Cart-CheckoutService, Cart-DiscountEngine, Inventory-StockTracker

Why it works: Prefixes act as “signposts” in a crowded ecosystem. Engineers can instantly infer:

• Ownership: Marketing-EmailService vs. Product-EmailService
• Function: Payment-RefundProcessor vs. Shipping-DeliveryTracker

Pro Tip: Reserve non-prefixed names for cross-domain utilities (e.g., AuthService).

3. Ban “V2,” “New,” and “Legacy”

The Problem: BillingServiceV2 becomes BillingServiceV3, and soon everyone forgets what V1 does.

The Fix: Never encode versioning or status in names. Use feature flags or API versioning instead.

• Bad: UserServiceLegacy, NewSearchEngine
• Good: UserProfileService, ProductSearchIndex

Why it works: Names should reflect what the service does, not its history.

Pro Tip: If you must mark deprecated services, use a -Deprecated suffix (e.g., InvoiceGenerator-Deprecated) and set a sunset date.

4. Build a Service Catalog (That People Actually Use)

The Problem: Even well-named services get forgotten if there’s no single source of truth.

The Fix: Create a centralized service catalog with:

• Owner (Team/Slack channel)
• Purpose (1-2 sentences max)
• Domain (e.g., “Payments,” “Shipping”)
• Dependencies (e.g., “Uses FraudDetectionAPI”)

Example Entry:

Name: Cart-CheckoutService  
Owner: #team-checkout  
Purpose: Handles checkout workflow, including applying discounts and initiating payment.  
Domain: Cart Management  
Dependencies: Payment-Gateway, Inventory-StockTracker

Pro Tip: Automate updates by linking the catalog to your CI/CD pipeline (e.g., update on deployment).

5. Implement the “5-Second Rule”

The Problem: Names like DataAggregator or CoreService require mental gymnastics to decode.

The Fix: If a new engineer can’t guess the service’s purpose within 5 seconds, rename it.

Test it: Ask someone unfamiliar with the system: “What do you think OrderFulfillmentCoordinatordoes?” If they say, “Uh… sends orders to warehouses?” – you’ve won.

Why it works: Forces simplicity and clarity over cleverness.

6. Run “Name Audits” Once a Year

The Problem: Services drift in purpose over time. UserAnalyticsService might now handle A/B testing, but its name doesn’t reflect it.

The Fix: Schedule recurring audits to:

• Check for naming drift (Does the name still match its role?)
• Identify duplicates (Three “Notification” services? Time to consolidate.)
• Archive zombies (Delete or mark deprecated services)

Pro Tip: I am going to ask for too much but tie audits to OKRs (e.g., “Reduce ambiguous service names by 30% this quarter”).

7. Treat Naming as a Cross-Team Ritual

The Problem: Developers name services in isolation, leading to conflicting conventions.

The Fix: Make naming a collaborative process:

• Require naming reviews for new services (invite architects and adjacent teams).
• Host naming workshops to align on conventions (e.g., “Should we use ‘API’ or ‘Service’ suffixes?”).
• Celebrate good names (Spotlight services with clear names in team meetings).

Why it works: Shared ownership = shared vocabulary.

The ROI of Good Names

After implementing these strategies, One team can see impactful results:

• Fewer Slack “What does this service do?” questions
• 2x faster onboarding for new engineers
• “Project Citadel” renamed to PaymentReconciliationEngine, saving countless all-hands explanations

But the biggest win? Trust. Clear names reduced tribal knowledge, empowering teams to collaborate without gatekeepers.

Your Turn: From Chaos to Clarity

Naming microservices isn’t about creativity—it’s about crafting a shared language for your organization. Like urban planning for your architecture, good names turn a sprawling service slum into a navigable city.

So start small: Audit one confusing service name this week. Rename it. Watch the confusion lift.

And if you ever feel tempted to name something “Project Phoenix,” remember John’s 5-minute Zoom shame. Your future self will thank you.