Common challenges in IT projects
Experience from many IT projects shows that it is difficult to achieve optimal communication between representatives from the business and software developers. The methods that are often used are too complicated and the involvement from the business is suffering. The system solutions that are chosen are therefore often driven by developers' limited understanding of the business's needs, and in the end, the developed systems do not become the support for the business that was hoped for. Event Storming is specifically developed to reduce the barrier between business and IT and to facilitate the involvement of the business in the system modeling work.
Another major challenge is the "silo problem". Employees normally have a fairly limited knowledge of what is happening in other departments and this can, for example, lead to duplication of work tasks and that departments create unnecessary problems for each other or unnecessary waiting times. With Event Storming, you can quickly increase your understanding of the whole and this often leads to new discoveries such as bottlenecks and consensus about which challenges to tackle with joint efforts. The end result is that priority is given to initiatives that create the greatest value for the business as a whole and that developed support systems offer optimal support for the business.
Why Event Storming is so powerful
Event Storming is based on a simple and ingenious concept, Key Domain Event. A Key Domain Event is an event in a business process that is expressed in past tense, for example "order placed". The concept is easy to understand for everyone and thus facilitates a high degree of involvement from the business. The organisation's representatives are called "Domain Experts" and with Event Storming you invite these domain experts and system developers to workshops where you explore business processes (the domain) together in a very time-efficient way.
During an Event Storming workshop, you brainstorm together and try to identify Key Domain Events. These events are then added to a timeline. Once this basic flow has been mapped, information is collected about which actors and systems are involved in the business process. Then you can choose to go continue in several directions and Event Storming is incredibly flexible in such a way that you can adapt the methodology to what information is to be collected and who the participants are. You can, for example, go further and build on with business rules, identified problem areas, users interfaces, etc.
There are three levels of Event Storming: Big Picture, Process Modeling and Software Design. In Big Picture, you map a business as a whole and try to find the biggest problems or opportunities in the business. Process Modeling focuses on an individual business process and tries to describe it in detail from start to finish, including all the alternative flows. Software Design is used when you want to get started quickly with the development of the system and with the help of this variant we can easily and quickly find which components we should build and how we should delimit our various subsystems. From a Software Design session, you automatically get Bounded Contexts and Aggregates. Bounded Contexts and Aggregates are concepts used in DDD (Domain Driven Design) and are used for designing the internals of software systems.
Benefits of Event Storming
- Quick to get started
- Easy to understand for everyone, no technical skills are needed
- No complicated technical tools required
- Adaptable to the purpose
- Time saving since you use the knowledge of the domain experts to the maximum
- Facilitates the identification of bottlenecks or conflict areas
- Creates a common understanding of the business outside the own department
- Increases the chances of reaching consensus across departmental boundaries on what to focus on
- Makes it easier for everyone to have their voice heard
How to get started with Event Storming
Qlerify has worked with Event Storming for a long time and has also developed a unique cloud-based tool with support for the methodology. We also provide public and customized courses in Event Storming together with our training partner NFI.
Here is more information about the course:
You often need help to get started with Event Storming and Qlerify has extensive experience in facilitating Event Storming workshops, both on site in a suitable venue or remotely via Zoom and with supportive modeling tools.
Contact us if you are curious to know more about Event Storming!