Señors at Scale - Software Engineering & Tech Leadership · Dan Neciu

Domain Driven Design at Scale with Vlad Khononov (O'Reilly and Pearson Author)

·57 min·1 clip

All software project failures eventually trace back to communication problems between business and engineers.

Vlad Kononov, renowned software architect and author, discusses Domain-Driven Design implementation at scale. Core thesis: most DDD projects fail because engineers focus on technical patterns (aggregates, entities) while neglecting strategic design (bounded contexts, ubiquitous language). Vlad traces all software failures to communication breakdown between business and engineering. He reveals his journey from frustration with missing business logic guidance to discovering ubiquitous language as the solution. The episode emphasizes that true DDD starts with understanding the business domain and identifying pain points, then categorizing subdomains by strategic importance (core vs. supporting). For brownfield projects, he recommends focusing DDD effort only on core business areas, not entire systems. Teams should own bounded contexts with single-team-per-context principle enabling efficient knowledge management.

As heard by us

A practical look at coupling, bounded contexts, and why DDD choices go stale when business labels change.

This episode takes a practical look at the hard edges of domain driven design, especially coupling, bounded contexts, and the way components tend to change together when they share knowledge.

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Why you'd press play

You want DDD that works for real teams, changing subdomains, and the occasional bad assumption.

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