Signifier
User
Account
Signified
Registered site
visitor
Personal
preferences
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cultural
contexts
shape
meaning
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business
contexts
shape
meaning
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Signifier
User
Account
Signified
Inbound visitor
Email preferences
Marketing context
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Signifier
User
Account
Signified
Credit card owner
Credit card
information
Payment context
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Each business group has its own
concepts
vocabulary
process(es)
assumptions
goals
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The invisible boundaries of culture &
language
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We’re speaking different languages!
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Domain-driven
naming
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Build a
glossary
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A Glossary is a list of terms and
definitions as thought about by the
business
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It is built collaboratively through
conversation, and continually updated
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Pay down
software
name debt
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Make a commitment to rename and
refactor your systems according to
your new language
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Build
boundaries
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Build a software boundary (Bounded
Context) around each business unit
(Subdomain)
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Concepts & names can be precisely
stated and free to evolve
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Getting to Alignment
Business ↔ Domain Language ↔ Software
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A perfectly
decent idea
for naming
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Prefer
Domain-Specific names
over
Flexibly Generic ones
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It’s not a… It’s a…
AppointmentList Calendar
Area SalesRegion
Business Restaurant
InvoiceManager BillingFlow
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How to
manage
change
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change: destroyer of systems
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the business pivots
Old concepts need to be supported,
but are no longer currently
applicable.
Draft up a plan to deprecate old
classes, modules, concepts.
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another team joins the fray
Not everyone has the same conceptual
model; drift occurs in naming and
concepts
Consistently talk about naming in
architecture meetings and code reviews
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an employee leaves
She knows things about the system
nobody else does
Anticipate her departure and
collaboratively update the glossary &
other documentation
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In summary
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Applying semiotics to software
Meaning in software systems is
constructed through a business-
cultural lens
Therefore: view your system as a
federation of cultures.
Develop an independent, documented
vocabulary for each business context.
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Align software to the business
Clean systems map directly to business
contexts
Therefore: Update systems to cleanly
use domain language.
Modularize systems to independently
operate in each business unit.
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Proactively manage change
Change threatens to topple systems by
introducing ambiguity
Therefore: develop practices of
updating documentation, sharing
information and continually having
conversations
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The summary
of the
summary
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See cultural
boundaries
Write it
down
Talk to business
experts
Change the
code