I see domain models as a shared foundation between product, design and dev. But I don't see it happening on teams, ever. It helps me understand what's possible, anchors feature flows in what's possible, avoids over designing.
So why aren't more product teams collaborating on ERDs? Sometimes when I ask for a schema or ERD to get oriented, I get blank stares. Are there different ways developers think about data modeling beyond ERDs?
Is collaborating on the domain model a good entry point between design and engineering? What does that collaboration usually look like in your org?
Would love to hear how others approach this, especially from engineers who work closely with designers, or designers who’ve gotten better at it over time.
aristofun•2d ago
Because a) incentives b) rarely a complex enough product/company fits some fancy “practice X”.
A) you usually don’t get promoted by simply better organizing a process or your team work. But rather for pushing something tangible as quickly as possible out the door.
B) i already have common understanding of the product with designers after some initial onboarding period - why do i have to bother loading yet another set of concepts and constraints in my head already full of tickets, docs, meetings, obligations, decisions, code reviews, proposals, incidents, weird bugs, slack bots, performance reviews, open discussions, pairing sessions, important emails, failing tests, dissapointed customers, deadlines, bad codebase to refactor, juniors to mentor, slides to prepare, HN posts to comment?
:)
adangit•1d ago