Our teams were struggling with cognitive load and delivery friction in our Big Ball of Mud. We found our path forward through strategic thinking and domain-driven design. This talk shares our story of using good strategy principles—honest diagnosis, clear guiding policies, and coherent actions—to give purpose and direction to our domain-driven design efforts. We'll walk through our initial struggles, key turning points, and hard-learned lessons about how strategic thinking helped us move from "we have to refactor everything" to actually improving team flow. You'll hear about what worked, what didn't, and how we’re measuring progress along the way. Through our ongoing experience, you'll see one possible path to using strategic thinking and domain-driven design to enhance team flow in complex socio-technical environments.

Key moments we'll explore:
- How we diagnosed our real challenges (not just the symptoms)
- When we realized our architectural decisions needed strategic grounding
- The specific ways we used DDD patterns to support our guiding policies
- Unexpected benefits and challenges in team flow