Is packwerk necessary for a team of 4 backend engineers with a large codebase and plans to double in size?

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I was talking to someone I met at RailsConf, and he asked:

do you think packwerk is overkill for a team of 4 backend engineers but a very large codebase? we want to double in team size in next few months

I don’t have a good answer ready, but thought I would share since I’m sure folks Have Opinions :slightly_smiling_face:

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We had a pretty large discussion about that over here. And, oddly, about the same sized team.

ty :bow:

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^ well said

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I can report that I spent roughly 4 weeks breaking our app into packages/modules. Not full time, but as my primary activity for those 4 weeks. And we now have it split into ~14 packages with 0 dependency violations. The dependency graph is not pretty but at least we now have a starting point for improving. I did this while the rest of the team continued doing their regular development without interruption.

We had an evaluation monday and the team member were all happy with the new structure and could see the benefits.

We’re now starting to introduce Packwerk in other teams.

So yeah, absolutely go for it even with a small team!