‘Strategic Design’
2-Day Workshop (can be extended to 3 days)

Some design decisions have an impact on the trajectory of the whole project. Modeling is most needed in complex circumstances, yet the typical dynamics of large projects too often derail it or disconnect it from the real design. This course delves into three principles for clarifying the big picture, getting effort focused on the core, and coordinating multi-team development.

This workshop combines lecture, simulation exercises, and discussion. (Optionally, a programming lab can be added to relate strategy to concrete implementation decisions.). The end of each day is a retrospective discussion bringing out the main points of the day’s experience and relating them to the earlier days and to the participants’ own work.

Prerequisites

Required

Experience with large-scale application development. Basic knowledge of object modeling and software system design.

Recommended

Advanced knowledge of modeling and design. Familiarity with design patterns.

Target Audience

Advanced developers, technical leaders and managers.

Course Outline

Day 1 Morning: Ubiquitous Language

• Domain-driven design overview
• Relating the model with team language (exercise)
• Test-driven development (TDD) and test writing as a modeling process

 

Day 1 Afternoon: Context Mapping

• Pragmatic approach to dealing with diverse models and designs on real projects
• Relationships between subsystems/ relationships between teams

 

Day 2 Morning: Distillation

• Distinguishing the Core Domain
• Different strategies for Core and Generic Domains
• Where to emphasize supple design

 

Day 2 Afternoon: Large-scale Structure

• Patterns of structure
• Helpful and harmful structures
• Organizing for strategic decision-making

 

Day 2 Late Afternoon: Conclusions and Review

The workshop can be extended to 3 days. Some options for additional material include:

Making Enterprise Frameworks Work for You

(This module is usually focused on the technology family the team uses. This example is for a J2EE project.)

• Presentation/discussion/Q&A
• Typical mistakes with Servlets and EJBs
• Problems of mixing domain logic with J2EE framework components such as Servlets and EJBs
• How to limit coupling your design to the frameworks (making migration to later versions easier)
• Making code easier to understand
• Making code easier to test
• When to use framework features and when to use POJOs
• Avoiding becoming a "fashion victim"

 

Lab: Multi-Subsystem/ Multi-Team Design

• writing tests at subsystem boundaries
• identifying hotspots
• writing tests at hotspots
• writing translation layers

 

Preparation for the Class

In order to tune the class to the level and circumstances of the participants, we will ask some of your developers to fill out a brief (10-15 minutes) on-line questionnaire to give us an idea of their knowledge and background. We will also have the team leader answer a few questions about the project's goals, history and processes.

Since it is essential that participants be free to discuss their real project challenges in the classroom, we make any needed nondisclosure agreements prior to the class.

Finally, we recommend buying each attendee a copy of the book, Domain-Driven Design, as part of the package. This is the text book for the course and makes a very valuable reference in the following months.