Andrej Simeunovic, Uros Tripunovic:
Managing Micro Frontends Across Multiple Tech Stacks - Sharing, Finding & Publishing,
summary, report, June 2023.

Abstract:

IKEA is a large enterprise composed of multiple teams with diverse tech stacks. These teams are interested in exploring the possibility of sharing frontend features to avoid duplicating existing functionality. The company aims to introduce the concept of Micro Frontends (MFEs) to reduce code duplication, minimize communication overhead, and increase code reusability while enabling autonomous development. However, the introduction of MFEs alongside the current tech stacks poses the challenge of aligning technologies across teams at IKEA. While the teams at IKEA don’t currently face challenges in finding and publishing MFEs due to being in the early phase of working with them, it’s crucial to address this issue in advance. Doing so will further minimize code duplication, reduce communication overhead, and increase code reusability.

Following a series of experiments inspired by literature studies and interviews, two methods were discovered for the teams at IKEA to share MFEs without needing to change their current tech stack. These methods involve either wrapping framework components as Web Components or exposing a framework’s render method within a function and injecting them into the frontend application. Each method requires a different level of effort when integrating them into a tech stack. In terms of finding and publishing MFEs, IKEA already has an existing platform. As part of our evaluation of IKEA’s existing platform, we compared it to our requirements specification, which was derived from our interview with developers at IKEA. To enhance the ease of finding MFEs, we suggested improvements to their search functionality by displaying the teams involved in creating each MFE.