As we learned in the previous episode, not every decision benefits from decentralization.

When microservices use technologies different from the original monolith, the organization pays:

• a one-time cost to set up each service
• a recurring cost to operate and support it

The cost of building actual features, however, stays roughly the same regardless of language or paradigm.

So autonomy should be tiered — unify decisions that reduce operational and coordination overhead!

1. Strict tier
Single standards to avoid repeated work across teams:

• infrastructure — cloud provider, core services, machine types
• API standards — protocol, versioning and deprecation rules (might differ by service class)
• monitoring and alerting — shared logging, metrics, and alerting conventions
• security policies — access control, secret rotation, PII handling

2. Relaxed tier
A small set of options (2–5 choices) to balance flexibility and cognitive load:

• programming languages and frameworks
• messaging technologies
• database technologies

3. Guardrail tier
Default “golden paths” teams follow unless they consciously opt out:

• recommended tech stacks
• starters and templates
• base CI/CD pipelines

4. Free tier
Fully team-owned decisions where autonomy improves effectiveness without added recurring costs:

• internal quality practices
• release process
• release schedule

Tiered autonomy reduces infrastructure and support costs, while giving teams enough freedom to organize their work effectively.