Patterns, Principles, and Practices of Domain-Driven Design

2 Distilling the Problem Domain

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• The need for knowledge crunching
• How collaboration can foster a shared understanding and a shared language
• What a domain expert is and why the role is essential
• Effective methods for gaining domain knowledge

Making sense of a complex problem domain in order to create a simple and useful model requires in-depth knowledge and deep insight that can only be gained through collaboration with the people that understand the domain inside and out. Continuous experimentation and exploration in the design of a model is where the power of DDD is realized. Only through collaboration and a shared understanding of the problem domain can you effectively design a model to solve the challenges of the business that will be supple enough to adapt as new requirements surface.

This chapter introduces methods to facilitate the distilling of domain knowledge in order to better understand the problem domain, which will enable you to build an effective domain model. Methods to extract important information on the behaviors of an application along with techniques to discover deep insights within the problem domain are also presented.

Knowledge Crunching and Collaboration

Complex problem domains will contain a wealth of information, some of which will not be applicable to solving the problem at hand and will only act to distract from the real focus of your modelling efforts. Knowledge crunching is the art of distilling relevant information from ...