Often, the software that's most valuable involves specialized domain rules—rules that are filled with tricky edge cases and unintuitive concepts. How can development teams get those rules right? In this book club session, we explore several related concepts: customer examples, ubiquitous language, and domain modelling.

Reading:
📖 Customer Examples
📖 Ubiquitous Language

🎙 Discussion prompts:

• Have you developed software involving a specialized domain, such as finance? If so, how did it play out?

• The book says the value of example-based testing tools (such as Cucumber) is the conversation about customers examples rather than the tool itself. Have you found that to be true? How have you used examples to better understand stakeholder needs?

• A “ubiquitous language” involves reflecting domain experts’ ideas and language in programmers’ code and conversations. How has this worked out for you in practice? If you haven’t tried it, what do you think would happen if you did?

• “Ubiquitous Language” comes from Eric Evans’ Domain-Driven Design, which emphasizes creating rich object-oriented domain models. What do you see as the pros and cons of this approach?

About the Book Club

From October 2021 to August 2022, I hosted a call-in talk show based on the second edition of The Art of Agile Development. The series used the book as a jumping-off point for wide-ranging discussions about Agile ideas and practices, and had a star-studded guest list.

For an archive of past sessions, visit the book club index. For more about the book, visit the Art of Agile Development home page.