The event sourcing architecture we didn't build

Monday.com's Data Lifecycle team built a board retention system for enterprise admins in three months by choosing a pragmatic microservice approach over event sourcing. The solution tracks board activity using SNS events buffered through Redis and historical data from their warehouse, enabling automated archival based on configurable policies. While event sourcing with CQRS would have provided better extensibility across entity types, the team prioritized speed to validation, avoiding cross-team coordination and substantial infrastructure changes. The tradeoff: single-entity focus and feature-specific data sources instead of reusable projections, with plans to revisit shared infrastructure when duplication patterns emerge across multiple features.