Domain-Driven Design has long held that deep domain knowledge is the foundation of high-quality, maintainable software. So when AI can dramatically reduce the time to build a solution, we short-circuit the learning process that makes DDD valuable in the first place. 1/2

In the latest episode of Satisfying Software, Kenny Baas Schwegler and Gien Verschatse get into the nuts and bolts of Domain-Driven Design and the differences between domains, subdomains, and bounded contexts. They both share some tips you can try out, including this one from Kenny.

Our podcast series Satisfying Software is back! In episode 1, Gien Verschatse has a conversation with Susanne Kaiser about Software Architecture, strategic thinking and the power of Wardley Mapping. Check out the full video - buff.ly/aFy7NWn

We've just published a case study about our recent work with a deep tech scale-up Orbem. Using AI to industrialise MRI, Orbem enables non-invasive insight into everything from fruits to eggs to the human body. The new case study details our work together. Take a look! buff.ly/GtB7zne

Introduce new thinking in your organisation with a talk from one of our consultants. Whether it's for an internal conference or a standalone event, we can create momentum for change in your organisation. Get in touch to learn more aardling.eu/en/services/...

Portbase’s goal is to enable goods and data to flow efficiently through Dutch ports. With our help, Portbase gained a strategic tool for managing the complexity of critical port infrastructure. Take a look at our case study aardling.eu/en/insights/...

If the model you create is hidden away in the engineering organisation, you will lose a lot of its value. The business needs to not only understand the model but also share the ownership. aardling.eu/en/insights/...

When we model, finding the right words helps us reason at a higher level. In a recent presentation, our senior consultant Stijn Vannieuwenhuyse shared some tips for designing domain models with the business in mind. Read more on our blog - aardling.eu/en/insights/...

“OK, we’ve done some EventStorming. Now what? How do we translate it into code?” Just because something appears in the EventStorm, it doesn’t mean it needs to be implemented as code. A Command in the model might end up being a function call on an object.

💡 "We listen to what the business wants and translate that into quality software" If you describe DDD to someone outside of software development, they might assume all software is designed this way, but in reality, it's not!

Your domain model isn’t helping your business (yet!) To ensure your model brings value to the business, all key business stakeholders need to understand the model. If it's only the engineers, your team miss out on lots of value. 1/2

When should you reconsider the design of your current domain model? Noticing when your domain model is no longer fit for purpose is a crucial skill for programmers. It's important that as a team, you have a culture that questions whether the model is a stable reflection of the software.

You can’t perfectly design your software system from the beginning. Your system design will evolve as you iterate based on customer feedback and new information. Once you have this iterative cycle, refactoring and adding new product capacities becomes easier Search for Satisfying Software on YT

“The hardest part (of deciding) is framing the problem. It is also the part we spend the least amount of time on.” This is _so_ true. 👏🏻 @gienverschatse.com closing #NewCrafts #Paris 2025.

@newcrafts.bsky.social Day 2 in Paris 🇫🇷 is underway. @tcoopman.bsky.social ran a workshop reviewing the advantages of using LLMs to design complex software systems. And @gienverschatse.com closed the day with her keynote on how to make better decisions in complex software projects.

🚫 Your bounded contexts shouldn't match 1-1 with your business domains. Mathias Verraes, Aardling's principal consultant, recently wrote about this on his blog. verraes.net/2025/08/doma...

The quote "All models are wrong but some are useful" should not be read as an excuse to stick with your model. It's a call to actively search for more useful models.

If you're new my work on models: verraes.net/2022/09/crit...

High praise for our senior consultant @gienverschatse.com!

Jordy Dehaes, CTO: "Protime was in a challenging moment when Aardling came along and Thomas struck the right balance between getting input and moving forward." "It definitely helped to have that outside voice with different experiences," says Erik Sacré. 📖 Read the full case study: bit.ly/3IdwYMC

From chaos to clarity: Designing the new team structure: Aardling didn't just identify Protime's ownership problem, they architected the solution. The transformation design: FROM:Feature teams rotating every 4-6 months TO:Domain-aligned teams with clear ownership 📖 Read further bit.ly/3IdwYMC

The power of asking the right questions at the right time 💡 Aardling's breakthrough with Protime came through carefully designed workshops with a cross-section of the software organisation. 📖 Read the full case study: bit.ly/3IdwYMC

Erik Sacré, Protime's Technology Architect, highlights what made Aardling's guidance valuable: "Thomas could point to examples where this had worked or where this didn't work. I could only bring it from a theoretical point of view 📖 Read the full case study: bit.ly/3IdwYMC

How do you diagnose complex organisational problems? When Protime contacted Aardling in 2023, they had 12 teams, solid technical infrastructure, but delivery was unpredictable. The breakthrough insight: "Everyone owns everything" had become "No one owns anything." 📖 bit.ly/3IdwYMC

Calling all data leaders and practitioners! 📣 Data Mesh Live 2026 is your essential meeting point for advice, guidance, and community in managing data in complex environments. Join us June 11-12, 2026, for practical, actionable insights on building modern data systems at scale: 2026.datameshlive.com

The CFP for Domain-Driven Design Europe 2026 and for Data Mesh Live 2026 is open: Our consultants wrote some tips to help write the best CFP: aardling.eu/en/insights/...

Aardling is bringing two leading conferences back to Antwerp in 2026! - DDD Europe (June 10-12) - Data Mesh Live (June 11-12) Tickets are now open for both conferences: ti.to/on3/aardling26.

Nothing beats face-to-face learning and networking. Join us in beautiful Paris for an immersive workshop experience where you can connect with fellow practitioners and dive deep into complex scenarios together. 🇫🇷 Location: Paris, France 🤝 Format: Interactive in-person workshop 👉 ti.to/aafr/nc25

Join our expert Aardling consultant Gien Verschatse for an in-depth exploration of strategic DDD concepts. This training focuses on the high-level design patterns and strategic thinking that make DDD so powerful for complex business domains. Discover Strategic DDD: ddd.academy/strategic-dd...

From an engineering perspective, software wants to be decoupled. From a business value perspective, software wants to be deeply interconnected. That's the fundamental friction that software design, and Domain-Driven Design specifically, attempts to address.

"We have this mythical person in the DDD community: the domain expert" @settling-mud.bsky.social in the keynote with @johncutle.fish #dddeu

At DDD Europe "Model drift and software attractors" by Barry O'Reilly, the great software architecture philosopher #dddeu

Come and say hi to us at the Aardling booth @dddeu.bsky.social @eventcentric.bsky.social! Learn about how we help teams with domain modelling and software strategy. We're also raffling off a pair of Sennheiser headphones 🎧

Here we go! We're underway with Gregor Hohpe in Antwerp!

In this video, Yury Niño Roa focuses on the circuit breaker pattern for microservices, which describes a good solution to reoccurring fault tolerance.

Listen to “System Thinking” on our @aardlingeu.bsky.social YouTube Channel: youtu.be/PQ7alnbdUp4 (Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.)

Most of the articles that can be found on the Internet about Event Sourcing are wrong or incomplete. Oskar Dudycz will gather crazy ideas from the Internet and compile them into a recipe for disaster. By the end of this video, you'll have an idea of what, and what not, to do. youtu.be/JTtia9jFHdE

In the video, Jérémie Chassaing pulls apart the buzzwords and shows how a functional approach leads first to domain code that is easily readable and highly testable.

What happens if you mix #EventStorming with a Low Code Platform? Christof Heinzel & Alexander Miertsch will take you on a visual modelling journey based on a real use case from a client's project.

With the rise in momentum and adoption of CQRS and Event Sourcing, so has the importance of projections. Yet, there's not much on the role they play. We'll look at the various ways to go about designing, authoring, and testing projections.

Peter Royal will uncover the design and implementation of an application helping power Netflix’s studio. Borrowing ideas from #EventSourcing and #CQRS, he will show how this model is aligned with modern cloud-based architectures and capabilities desired in business applications.

Traceability, Consistency, Correctness. Why Nordic fintech Lunar chose #eventsourcing and the challenges it brought.

Listen to “Communication patterns for engineers” on our @aardlingeu.bsky.social YouTube Channel: youtu.be/oKdbQfqDolU (Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.)

Based on interviews with 25 engineers, in which 19 event-sourced systems are discussed, Michael Overeem, lead software architect at AFAS explores the rationale for event-sourcing.

You can’t perfectly model a system from the beginning. Designing software is often an iterative process where you build, share with customers, add features and so on. @tcoopman.bsky.social speaks w/ @gienverschatse.com about DDD, tactical design patterns, and why refactoring is a non-negotiable.

There are patterns for dealing with conflicting updates in traditional data stores but how do you deal with conflicts when you have event streams? This video covers patterns for conflict detection in traditional storage and how event-sourced systems differ when conflicts occur.

This is a hell of a podcast🔥. I will definitely reuse your « passive agressive events » metaphor 😄 The first part of your podcast dedicated to some EDA pitfalls resonates a lot with things that @paulinejamin.bsky.social and I are talking about in our last talk.

Event-Driven systems come with challenges: How do we version our events? Can we only publish events in an Event-Driven Architecture? How do we test all of this? These are a few of the questions I discussed with @noctovis.bsky.social in our latest episode of Satisfying Software!

An EventSourcing experience report: Lessons on event synchronization in mostly-offline settings, and conflict management.

Which programming language works really well with Tactical Patterns? When should be involve our software developers? How to deal with something that is over or under modeled? In our second episode of Satisfying Software, I spoke with @tcoopman.bsky.social on the Tactical Patterns of DDD.