Applying Action Research to Investigate Benefits and Limitations of Migrating to a Micro-Frontends Architecture

[Context] The adoption of micro-frontends architecture has gained traction as a promising approach to enhance modularity, scalability, and maintainability of web applications. [Goal] The primary aim of this research is to investigate the benefits and limitations of migrating a real-world application to a micro-frontends architecture from the perspective of the developers. [Method] Employing action research, after the diagnosis and planning, the researchers applied the intervention of migrating the web application to a micro-frontends architecture. Thereafter, the migration was evaluated in a workshop involving the developers responsible for maintaining the application. During the workshop, the developers were presented with the migrated architecture, conducted a simple maintenance task, discussed benefits and limitations in a focus group to gather insights, and answered a questionnaire on the acceptance of the technology. [Results] Developers' perceptions gathered during the focus group reinforce the benefits and limitations reported in the literature. Key benefits included enhanced flexibility in technology choices, scalability of development teams, and gradual migration of technologies. However, the increased complexity of the architecture raised concerns among developers, particularly in dependency and environment management, debugging, and integration testing. [Conclusions] While micro-frontends is a promising technology, unresolved issues currently still limit their broader applicability. Developers generally perceived the architecture as useful and moderately easy to use but exhibited hesitance toward adopting it.