conduct-event-storming

name

conduct-event-storming

description

WHEN/WHERE/WHO: [Scheduling: Architects, domain experts, product owners, or agents analyzing a new business domain or complex workflow.] HOW: [Structural: Use this SKILL to facilitate a Big Picture Event Storming session, discovering Domain Events chronologically, and mapping them to Commands, Actors, and Aggregates.] WHY: [Scheduling: Traditional requirements gathering focuses on static data, leading to anemic models. Event Storming focuses on behavior to reveal domain boundaries.]

Conduct Event Storming

Who

Software Architects, Domain Experts, Product Owners, Business Analysts, and AI Agents acting as facilitators. The agent uses this skill to lead a structured exploration of a business domain using the Event Storming format.

What

Facilitate a "Big Picture" or "Design-Level" Event Storming session. The output is a chronological flow of business events, the triggers that cause them, the actors involved, and the aggregates (state machines) that enforce business rules.

When

Invoke this skill at the beginning of a project, when reverse-engineering a legacy system, or when tackling a highly complex, poorly understood business workflow.

Trigger phrases: "Let's event storm this", "Map out the domain events for...", "What are the events in this subdomain?".

Where

Applies to system design planning, requirements analysis, and domain discovery discussions. The output is typically captured in a Mermaid graph or markdown list.

Why

Focusing on data structures (ERDs) early leads to tight coupling and "CRUD-heavy" systems. Event Storming forces participants to think in terms of business behavior (verbs) and timelines, uncovering edge cases and natural boundaries (Bounded Contexts) much earlier in the lifecycle.

Inputs

• Business Process/Workflow (required): The domain to explore (e.g., "E-commerce Checkout", "Loan Origination").
• Known Actors (optional): Users or external systems interacting with the workflow.

Output (Logical Evidence)

• A chronological timeline of Domain Events, Commands, Actors, Policies, and Aggregates.
• A Mermaid.js flowchart visualizing the Event Storming timeline.

Optimization Readiness

• Failure Signals: Events are not written in past tense, triggers are missing, business behavior is replaced by UI or data-model discussion, or the timeline fails to expose boundaries and bottlenecks.
• Evidence To Collect: Event timelines, command-event trigger chains, actor assignments, aggregate clusters, and examples of branching or parallel paths that were discovered.
• Safe Mutation Boundaries: Refine facilitation prompts, legend guidance, timeline formatting, and aggregate-clustering cues without changing the core events-first exploration model.
• Acceptance Criteria: Accept revisions only if the resulting model starts with events, ties each event to a trigger, and identifies aggregates and possible bounded-context boundaries from the timeline.
• Rejected Revision Handling: Record “magic” events, non-past-tense labels, and UI-first discussion patterns so they are not repeated.
• Transfer Check: Verify the workflow still works for simple business processes and for branching workflows with policies and external systems.
• Stop Rule: If the business process is too vague to name events and triggers reliably, stop and ask before mapping the timeline.

Constraints (Logical Boundaries)

• RULE 1: Events First. Always start by identifying Domain Events. Do not discuss UI, databases, or classes until the timeline of events is complete.
• RULE 2: Past Tense. Domain Events MUST be written as verbs in the past tense (e.g., OrderPlaced, not PlaceOrder).
• RULE 3: Identify Triggers. Every event must have a trigger: either a user Command, an external system, time passing, or a Policy.

How (Structural Workflow)

Phase 1: Chaotic Exploration (Domain Events)

1. Ask the user to list all the things that happen in the business process.
2. Format these as Domain Events (Orange sticky notes) written in past tense.
   • Example: ItemAddedToCart, PaymentDeclined, OrderShipped.
3. Arrange them in chronological order from left to right.
4. Identify parallel paths, branching logic, and bottlenecks.

Phase 2: Enforce the Timeline & Triggers

5. For each Domain Event, ask "What caused this?".
6. Identify the Commands (Blue sticky notes) that trigger the events.
   • Example: Submit Payment (Command) -> PaymentProcessed (Event).
7. Identify the Actors (Yellow sticky notes) who execute the Commands.
   • Example: Customer (Actor) -> Submit Payment (Command).
8. Identify External Systems (Pink sticky notes) that trigger events or receive them.
9. Identify Policies/Read Models (Lilac/Green sticky notes) where automatic business logic triggers a command based on an event.
   • Example: Policy "When PaymentDeclined, trigger SendFailureEmail command".

Phase 3: Identify Aggregates (Design-Level)

10. Group the Command and its resulting Event around the data/state it modifies.
11. Label this state machine as the Aggregate (Pale Yellow sticky note).
    • Example: Customer -> Submit Payment -> PaymentTransaction (Aggregate) -> PaymentProcessed.
12. Look for clusters of Aggregates to identify potential Bounded Context Boundaries.

Phase 4: Output the Model

13. Document the final flow in a structured markdown list, explicitly using the color-coded legend terminology.
14. Optionally generate a Mermaid.js graph to visualize the Actor -> Command -> Aggregate -> Event flow.

Resources

• Event Storming Legend

Validation

1. Verify all Domain Events are past tense.
2. Verify no Domain Event happens "by magic" (it must have a Command, Policy, or External System trigger).
3. Verify Aggregates are named as nouns that represent business concepts.