Heuristics

Accept Imperfect Boundaries in Legacy Decomposition

Authors: Peter Hunter, Elena Stojmilova, Kenny Schwegler, Andrea Magnorsky

Submitter: Peter Hunter

How should you approach defining team boundaries when migrating a legacy monolith?

When applying DDD to a legacy system, accept that the initial boundaries will be imperfect and 'not pretty.' The goal is to create a starting point for team autonomy, even if it requires pragmatic compromises on architectural purity. These boundaries can be refined over time.

Example

To move away from a legacy application, the architecture was 'chopped up' into a context map. The team accepted that the initial boundaries were not good, but they were a necessary first step.

 

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