Seeing the System: Using EventStorming to Understand, Challenge, and Redesign Software

Whether you’re working with legacy systems, planning new features, or reviewing a team’s proposed data model, EventStorming is a powerful tool for surfacing what really matters in your architecture. In this session, you’ll learn how EventStorming has helped teams uncover the real scope of a project, reconstruct the logic behind legacy features, facilitate stakeholder conversations, and challenge questionable architectural assumptions.

We’ll walk through practical patterns and real examples: how to run effective sessions, what kinds of conversations to look for, and how to use EventStorming to bring clarity to both technical and business perspectives.

If you’re an architect or senior developer looking for ways to cut through complexity and design with confidence, this talk is for you.

We use EventStorming with clients and get an assortment of outcomes:
- Discovering features in legacy apps
- Identifying future enhancements to understand the direction of an app
- Discussing architectural considerations and unearthing why certain choices may not make sense in their circumstance

Snack Time: EventStorming with Snack-Inspired Systems

Ever wondered how a vending machine really works? This 4-hour workshop dives into Event Storming and how it can improve your system design and coding experiences, using a vending machine as our case study. We’ll uncover hidden bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and build a clearer understanding of any system - from snack machines to software. Through engaging, hands-on Event Storming exercises, participants will collaboratively map out every step, revealing opportunities for improvement and building a more ‘constructible’ solution. It's about getting to the heart of the matter, just like understanding how a vending machine delivers your favorite treat. Join us for an interactive session on how EventStorming can be used for exploratory conversations as well as for designing better systems with better requirements and a shared understanding.

Why Design Patterns Matter: A Holiday Cookie Recipe for Better Code

Just as holiday cookie recipes give you tried-and-true methods for festive treats, design patterns provide proven solutions to common coding challenges. In this post, we’ll explore why design patterns are valuable in .NET development by comparing them to holiday cookie recipes. From creational patterns that help us set up ingredients to structural patterns that shape our dough, each pattern plays a role in producing reliable, scalable code. If you've ever followed a recipe to make the perfect holiday cookies, you’re already familiar with the benefits of design patterns!

On Mentoring Junior Developers

While it is one thing to learn from videos or blog posts, it is a different experience when you have someone to turn to that can answer the questions you have when you have them. It makes a world of difference to be able to ask someone “What do they mean when they say ‘inheritance vs. interfaces’?” When you have someone who forces you to think about what it is you want in life and what steps you may need to take to get there… someone who can make introductions and offer direction… it makes your career and life a little less scary and a lot more manageable. In this session, we will look at some practices that are used by great mentors in the field and learn lessons on how we can be great role models and mentors for our future – junior developers!

From Monolith Towards Microservices: EventStorming as Your Modernization Blueprint

Modernizing legacy monoliths is a daunting task, but EventStorming offers a clear path forward. Join us as we show how you can use EventStorming to deconstruct your monolithic .NET applications and migrate them towards a microservices architecture. This session will provide actionable insights into the EventStorming process, highlighting how it helps align technical and business teams while reducing risks and ensuring a smooth transition.

Decision Records: Understanding Why Those Decisions Were Made!

Ever stared at a complex system and thought, "Wait, why was that decision made?!” We’ve all been there – lost in a maze of logic, struggling to track down the root cause of a problem. Decision Records offer a brilliant way to finally unlock that understanding. They’re like having a detailed, searchable log of every decision in your applications – from architectural style to authentication to service discovery and containerization. By capturing these decisions, you build more maintainable, auditable, and, frankly, less frustrating systems. In this session, you will learn how decision records solve problems and will be given ideas of templates that you can implement in your projects today! Let’s ditch the guesswork and start documenting the why – because truly understanding your systems is the key to unlocking its full potential!