Xin Yao

Independent Consultant - contextualizing DDD, systems leadership & sociotechnical architecture

@xinyao@mathstodon.xyz

Xin is an independent consultant and speaker at international conferences. An avid practitioner of sociotechnical architecture and Domain-Driven Design (DDD), Xin nudges organizations at crossroads to move beyond seeing architecture as an upfront design blueprint. She is deeply committed to engaging collective reasoning and aspiration to build and evolve architecture as scaffolding for in-the-moment coherence, and for navigating the ever shapeshifting, multi-dimensional complexity we are all swimming in.

She architects collaborative design experiences in scale-ups and enterprises to unravel complexity and discover leverage points in software-centric strategy deployment. She’s spearheaded large-scale change initiatives in boundary-spanning roles, weaving together strategy, products, teams, systems and domains in reflective conversations to guide progress and reduce stress.

In sociotechnical environments where a team’s cognitive capacity is under constant stress, she practices domain-driven design and facilitates collaborative modeling to help agile teams and organizations make sense, make decisions and make intuitive business software.

Talk Session

Sociotechnical Design with DDD and Friends

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word DDD – Domain-Driven Design? Geeky-sounding patterns like Aggregate and Ubiquitous Language? Walls decorated with colorful event storming stickies? A miracle cure to rescue change initiatives in large companies? Or are you thinking of a software development method born in the pre-cloud and pre-microservice era, which after 20 years still seems to be struggling to gain traction?

Xin has lived and breathed DDD and domain-driven architecture for more than a decade. Drawing on her own developmental journey, Xin makes a case for the rising relevance of DDD and adjacent practices in a post-modern world, where aging companies struggle with aging software, while adding new software and complexity to their IT portfolio. With good attractor effect, DDD is evolving from a software-centric design discipline to a multi-dimensional, sociotechnical design toolbox. Join Xin to reflect together on, how DDD and friends can be leveraged as powerful enabling constraints to help us see the system, share the system, and build the system in a reality of vast sociotechnical complexity and constant change.