Architecture in Gathering Requirements

Knowledge exploration exercises

Earlier in this course, I discussed various kinds of knowledge exploration exercises, such as Event Storming and Whiteboard Modeling. While these techniques help bring implementation closer to a domain, they also serve as technical guidelines for architecture and design activities. Let us review both of these exercises from a technical viewpoint.

When conducting Event Storming sessions, the outcome is a repository of events, commands, and aggregates. These concepts directly map into application building blocks with the same names. Specifically, events discovered during Event Storming will turn into events of Event-Driven Architecture (EDA; see Wiki EDA). Commands are an integral part of both EDA and CQRS (see example). And finally, aggregates are one of the essential building blocks of Model-Driven Design“Domain Driven Design” - a book by Eric Evans.

When conducting Whiteboard Modeling sessions, we discover business objects and the intricacies of their relationships that comprise the domain model at hand. These elements directly translate into Model-Driven Design building blocks since they are nothing but entities, value objects, and associations between them. All together they form aggregates.