Understanding the Issues, Their Causes and Solutions in Microservices Systems: An Empirical Study
Microservice system developers lack empirical evidence regarding the types, root causes, and remediation strategies of recurring issues. Method: We adopt a mixed-methods approach—quantitatively analyzing 2,641 open-source issues, qualitatively interviewing 15 practitioners, and conducting a global survey with 150 practitioners. Contribution/Results: We introduce the first comprehensive, domain-specific three-level taxonomy (“Issue–Cause–Solution”) for microservices. We identify five high-frequency issue domains—including technical debt, CI/CD pipeline failures, and exception handling—and three predominant root causes, notably generic programming errors. From our analysis, we distill 177 actionable, context-aware remediation strategies. This work establishes an empirical foundation for microservice fault diagnosis and mitigation, delivers practical guidance for industry practitioners, and pinpoints critical research directions for next-generation microservice engineering.