Start with the failure you need to manage
Kubernetes earns its complexity when you need consistent scheduling, service discovery, controlled rollouts, policy, workload isolation, or a shared operating model across many services.
Know the tax
You own upgrades, storage behavior, networking policy, observability, secret delivery, workload rights, and recovery. A small team with one application may get more reliability from a managed application platform.
Choose reversible boundaries
Containerize cleanly, externalize state, define health endpoints, automate backups, and keep infrastructure reproducible. Those practices help whether or not Kubernetes is the destination.
Test operations, not readiness lights
A green pod does not prove public routing, durable storage, correct permissions, backup recovery, queue health, or the complete customer workflow.
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