Jen is a Technical Lead and aspiring architect, currently working as a consultant with Thoughtworks. With over a dozen years of experience, Jen has led teams across numerous domains and technology stacks, and has worked with clients worldwide. Her interests include building diverse, high performing teams and bridging the business-technical gap - helping engineers effectively communicate their ideas, architectures and designs with non-technical stakeholders. Jen is also an active advocate for greater diversity, equity and inclusion in the technology industry, volunteering her time and experience to further the cause.
In her free time, Jen immerses herself in tabletop games, video games and horror movies.
Despite their seeming inevitability, a big ball of mud doesn’t need to be your future. In this session, you will learn how to identify and resolve issues arising from unclear domain boundaries in large, multi-team software projects, no matter what the stage of delivery. Most importantly you’ll learn how to align all the teams, getting them working together effectively, with minimal disruption.
In code, domain boundaries often become blurred, causing cognitive load and leading to duplicated efforts or functionality gaps. These challenges are especially problematic when development is already underway, because disrupting teams or halting work causes delays and stakeholder frustration. Consequently, we put up with it, drifting slowly towards another inevitable big ball of mud.
Drawing from my experience on a major system involving 10+ teams, I’ll share how we use Business Capability Mapping to successfully identify, visualize, and address domain boundary issues without causing project delays. I’ll walk through the process we used to uncover capability misalignments, map out team responsibilities, and coordinate collaboration amongst teams to resolve these issues quickly and effectively. By the end of the session, you will have a toolkit to apply in your own large-scale projects to tackle similar challenges head-on, ensuring smoother and more efficient program execution.
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