Use Model with Domain: An Interview on Domain Storytelling
An interview explores Domain Storytelling, a collaborative modeling technique where domain experts and developers use pictographic language to visualize business processes. The approach helps create shared understanding and software models aligned with real business needs.
Background
- **Domain Storytelling** is a collaborative modeling technique where domain experts and developers walk through real-world business processes step-by-step, using a simple pictographic language (actors, work objects, activities, and sequences). It was created by Stefan Hofer and Henning Schwentner and popularized in their 2022 book *Domain Storytelling*.
- The approach is part of the broader **Domain-Driven Design (DDD)** ecosystem—a software philosophy that prioritizes modeling software around a deep understanding of the business domain rather than around technical abstractions.
- This interview discusses how EventSourcingDB.io (a company offering an event-sourcing database) uses Domain Storytelling to align its technical team with clients' actual business workflows, ensuring the database schema reflects domain language rather than generic data structures.
- **Event sourcing** itself is a persistence pattern where state changes are stored as an append-only log of events rather than as current-state snapshots; it pairs naturally with Domain Storytelling because both treat business events as first-class concepts.