How to Understand Almost Anything
How to Understand Almost Anything
A Practitioner's Guide to Domain Analysis
About the Book
Domain analysis is about understanding a body of knowledge, the subject matter of a domain. You want to understand the concepts, vocabulary, rules and constraints clearly enough so you can define a set of abstractions and their relationships, a formal model, a “language” that can be used to completely and unambiguously describe subject matter in the domain, and ultimately, to execute the subject matter. This book explains how to do this. After the introduction, the core of the book is three sections that cover the three aspects of domain analysis: collecting, thinking and validating. Chapter five zooms out beyond the core domain analysis activities and discusses related issues such as agility, business strategy and process change. The last chapter describes recurring ideas and concepts when defining abstractions. You can use those as reminders – or a checklist – of what to think about when designing your abstractions. The book is based on more than a decade of analysing domain and designing languages in a wide variety of domains from science to finance to public administration to healthcare.
About the Author
Table of Contents
Introduction
What is Domain Analysis • Domain versus System • A formal language • Programmable Platforms • Related Approaches • Domain Analysis and Dev Projects • People and Roles • Scale and Setup • The Domain Analysis Triangle • Terminology • What’s in the book • Who should read this
Collecting
Survey the Land • Written Material • Hidden Languages • The Right People • Organising Work • Consistent Terminology • Working Sessions • Active Listening • Consistency versus Change • Dealing with Uncertainty • Capture Results
Thinking
Time to Think! • Bounds of the Domain • Depth of the Solution • Removing Cruft • Abstraction • Test Support • Domain Crosscuts • Platforms • Industry Standards • Ups and Downs • Spread the Knowledge • Find a Critic
Validating
Domain Specification • Domain Implementation • Let Users Play • Implement Real Stuff • Conceptual Review • Analyse Usage • Dealing with Feedback • Great Demos • Writing
Supporting
Business & Strategy • Marketing & Communication • Agility & Roles • System & Process
Abstracting
Modularization • Encapsulation • Contracts • Contract Governance • Decoupling • Viewpoints • Annotations • Layers • Parametrisation • Standard Library • Types and Instances • Hierarchical Decomposition • Specialization • Open versus Closed World • Constraints • Weak Structure • Declaration over Implementation • Bottom-up Abstraction • Derived Properties • Taxonomies • Prescription versus Inference • Intra-Model Crosscheck • Execution Paradigms • Naming, Identity and References • Composition versus Reference • Versioning • About Nothing • On Errors |(Don’t) Go Meta
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