In this case it sounds like they started with a microservice architecture, but CI/CD automation necessary for robust testing and auto-scaling was not in place.

In this case it sounds like they started with a microservice architecture, but CI/CD automation necessary for robust testing and auto-scaling was not in place. The problem of queues getting backed up might have been addressed by adding a circuit breaker, but instead they chose to introduce shared libraries (again, without necessary testing and deployment), which resulted in very tight coupling of the so-called microservices.