The major difference is whether the small projects are independent applications that use some shared libraries (what I think you mean by "existing generalized c

The major difference is whether the small projects are independent applications that use some shared libraries (what I think you mean by "existing generalized components") or whether the small projects all talk to each other to create a single large application. If it's the former then you're just talking about refactoring functionality into a shared library, but at the end of the day you're still just building little monoliths. You don't have to worry about most of the problems that come up with microservices.