DDD Europe 2026 - Program

Rework is Just Discovery You Paid For Twice

DDD Europe - Talk (50min)

Speakers

Paul Rayner

Paul Rayner
Description

Rework feels like a technical problem. It's usually a discovery problem - insights that arrived too late to be cheap.

EventStorming is collaborative discovery on a wall - business experts and developers modeling a process together as domain events on a timeline. It's deceptively simple, but something powerful happens when the people who know the questions meet the people who know the answers, exploring together what they thought they already understood.

In this session, you'll learn:

  • Why modeling behavior over time reveals what data models and architecture diagrams hide
  • How to surface hidden complexity before it surfaces in production
  • The questions that unlock stuck conversations and expose risky assumptions
  • Why starting messy gets you to clarity faster
  • Practical techniques to run your first EventStorming session next week

You'll leave with a concrete approach for shared understanding that turns weeks of meetings into hours on a wall.


About Paul Rayner

Paul Rayner is a developer, instructor, coach and popular conference speaker. He co-founded DDD Denver and is founder and chairman of the Explore DDD Conference (exploreddd.com). His company Virtual Genius LLC, provides training and coaching in DDD and EventStorming for agile teams (virtualgenius.com). Paul is from Perth, Australia, but chooses to live, work and play with his wife and two children, in Denver, Colorado. He blogs at thepaulrayner.com and tweets with an Australian accent at @ThePaulRayner.