Where the value of a tech project really lives

· Published · 2 min read

The value of the vast majority of tech projects lies in the business rules:

  • modeling the different entities
  • the relationships that govern them
  • what is possible and what isn’t
  • what must stay in sync
  • who is allowed to do what… and so on

And yet… how many projects start head-first with the choice of technologies, the visual identity, or the first screens?

A fundamental mistake

It means focusing on what is the most volatile, and brings the least value.

And there’s a good chance those choices won’t be the right ones… and that the technology will very soon get in the way of a fine-grained modeling of the business.

Hacks will pile up, poorly thought-out entities will become rigid and incomprehensible.

I’d guess every developer or tech project lead has lived through this at least once!

The fix: set the keyboard aside

Set the keyboard aside, forget your code and your frameworks… and think only about the business.

  • what is a User, an Admin, a Client?
  • can these roles be combined?
  • what does “an Event is past” mean?
  • … and so on, depending on your project.

In fact, it’s possible to build the entire core of a program before a single line even exists in the database, or before the first button is designed.

The Domain, the core that decides everything

In software architecture, that business core is called the Domain. And please, cherish it: that’s where 80% of a project’s success or failure is decided.

10 days spent purely thinking about the business upfront can potentially save 9 months of debt and bugs two years later…

And once that business is modeled, the code still has to tell apart a business rule from a bug: the two don’t get handled the same way.