Exploring Domains and Collaborating with Domain Experts

Exploration and experimentation are essential in DDD. Rather than stopping the moment we get one useful model, we should look for alternatives that might reveal a deeper insight.

But we need to ensure that the exploration involves our domain experts; we are after all co-explorers. A heavy-duty requirements document will certainly drive the domain experts away, but even whiteboarding ideas using any kind of technical notation can be a turn-off, and lacks concrete feedback.

A couple of months ago skillsmatter.com ran a small 1-day conference devoted to domain driven design. Alongside Eric Evans, Gojko Adzic and other DDD alumni, I also gave a talk, and chose to discuss how Naked Objects can be use to build working prototypes that engage the users, “animating the domain model” and bringing it to life.

The Skillsmatter folk recorded podcasts of the entire proceedings, so if you’re interested then take a look at my talk and some of the others.