DDD Europe 2026 - Program

Software Design Accelerator: Surviving Complexity

DDD Europe - Hands-on Lab

Speakers

Jacqui Read

Jacqui Read
Description

(This is a hands-on lab with limited capacity)

In a world where 75%+ software projects still fail, what is going wrong? Failure means the system doesn't meet customer and/or business needs. This workshop allows you to super-charge your design learning, combining technical skills, team-working, conflict resolution, and complexity-management techniques.

Let’s break this cycle of failure; take these skills and apply them straight away to your work. The Software Design Accelerator is about increasing your velocity towards successful outcomes.

This workshop is based around a problem statement, where you will exercise a variety of software design techniques within a supportive environment. We'll take a step back to think about designing the system that builds the system, and have fun creating a design together.

Join this workshop to:

  • Get your teeth into an interesting problem with practical activities
  • Explore and share techniques for breaking down the problem and designing a solution
  • Practise strategies to manage complexity in software development
  • Explore the social-technical aspects of creating a software system

This is a fun and mostly practical workshop for anyone working in software development.

Prerequisites

Some experience of working on the design or implementation of a system is good to have, but students and those at the beginning of their software careers are most welcome. If you arrive at the course with additional experience, it will allow you to take away broader insights.


About Jacqui Read

Jacqui Read is a keynote speaker, an internationally-recognised solution and enterprise architect, and author of Communication Patterns: A Guide for Developers and Architects. She teaches public and private workshops and speaks at international conferences on topics such as architecture practices, systems design, and technical communication. Jacqui specialises in untangling and extracting value from data and knowledge, helping businesses to determine direction in complex environments. Her professional interests include collaborative modelling, knowledge management, Domain-Driven Design, sociotechnical architecture, and modernising enterprise architecture practices. Outside of work she enjoys gardening and strumming her ukulele while singing at the same time. Her website is https://jacquiread.com.