---
title: "Modulate Quality Investment by Domain Importance"
source: "https://virtualddd.com/heuristics/modulate-quality-investment-by-domain-importance/"
authors: ["Anne-Marie Charrett"]
tags: ["quality", "strategic design", "investment"]
type: "design heuristics"
question: "How do we allocate our limited quality and testing budget across a large, complex system?"
submitter: "Anne-Marie Charrett"
---

# Modulate Quality Investment by Domain Importance

Align the level of quality investment with the strategic importance of the business domain (Core, Supporting, or Generic). The Core Domain, which provides the primary competitive advantage, warrants the highest investment in rigorous testing and quality assurance. Supporting domains can receive a more pragmatic and less exhaustive quality treatment.

## Example

For our “Pricing” Core Domain, we mandate extensive property-based and exploratory testing. For the supporting “User Profile” service, we rely primarily on a robust suite of automated integration tests.