What is Big Picture Event Storming?
Big Picture Event Storming is one of the key approaches in Event Storming, a collaborative, workshop-based technique used for exploring and designing complex business domains. Event Storming was originally developed by Alberto Brandolini as a method to quickly surface domain knowledge in a group, primarily used in Domain-Driven Design (DDD).
What is Event Storming?
At its core, Event Storming is about discovering and mapping domain events, which are occurrences that have significance within a business domain. The process involves creating a visual timeline of events, encouraging teams to think in terms of what happens in a system or process. The idea is to capture how the business works, through the language and eyes of both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
What is Big Picture Event Storming?
Big Picture Event Storming is the highest level of abstraction in the Event Storming family, designed to explore an entire business domain in a very short amount of time. It is used early in the process to get a high-level view of the domain and identify the main challenges or opportunities for improvement. The goal is to gather different perspectives and expose any knowledge gaps, pain points, and bottlenecks.
Key Concepts of Big Picture Event Storming
1. Domain Events:
- These are significant occurrences in the business domain. For example, in an e-commerce system, a domain event might be "Order Placed" or "Payment Received." These are written on orange sticky notes and are the main building blocks.
2. Collaborative Exploration:
- The process brings together cross-functional teams—usually consisting of business stakeholders, domain experts, and software developers—so that different perspectives can be captured. It’s meant to be inclusive, with minimal technical jargon.
3. High-Level Focus:
- The aim is to map the entire business flow without diving into technical details. You’re not focusing on implementation yet but rather on understanding how things happen across the system, often across multiple business areas.
4. Timeline of Events:
- The workshop starts by asking participants to write down any significant events in the system or business process. These events are organized into a timeline to provide a bird’s-eye view of the system’s behavior and interactions.
5. Highlighting Pain Points and Bottlenecks:
- Once events are mapped, participants are encouraged to discuss where things break down or where inefficiencies exist. These problem areas are typically marked with purple sticky notes to signal pain points.
6. Understanding Roles and Actors:
- Identifying the people or systems responsible for each event helps to clarify the interactions. These are typically represented using yellow sticky notes to denote the actors involved in the processes.
7. Opportunities for Improvement:
- Big Picture Event Storming is also a way to spot areas for potential improvement or innovation. As gaps and inefficiencies are identified, it’s possible to brainstorm changes to the process.
8. Lack of Formal Rules:
- One of the core principles of Big Picture Event Storming is to keep things informal. There is no strict notation or process to follow. The focus is on discovery, which allows participants to contribute without being confined by traditional modeling techniques.
When to Use Big Picture Event Storming
- Early in a project: When you need to build a shared understanding of a complex system across business and technical teams.
- During business transformation: If the company is undergoing significant changes and you need to rethink how processes and systems work together.
- For product or service discovery: It’s a great way to identify gaps in current workflows or to design entirely new products and services.
- For aligning business and IT: It bridges the communication gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Steps in a Big Picture Event Storming Session
1. Set the Scope:
- Define the boundaries of the domain you want to explore. Are you covering a single business process, or do you want to map an entire business line?
2. Invite Key Participants:
- Gather participants from different areas of the business to ensure a wide range of perspectives.
3. Start with Events:
- Use orange sticky notes to represent significant events in the system. Let participants brainstorm freely, posting events to a large, shared wall or digital board.
4. Organize Events:
- As events are added, they’ll begin to form a natural timeline. You may want to rearrange them to ensure they flow logically.
5. Identify Actors:
- Use yellow sticky notes to denote the people or systems that trigger or respond to these events.
6. Highlight Pain Points:
- Add purple sticky notes where there are pain points, bottlenecks, or inefficiencies in the current process.
7. Discuss and Reflect:
- The facilitator encourages discussion around the events, pain points, and potential improvements.
8. Capture Insights:
- You may conclude the session by identifying the next steps, such as deeper dives into specific areas using other Event Storming techniques (e.g., Process Level Event Storming or Design Level Event Storming).
Benefits of Big Picture Event Storming
- Shared Understanding: It builds a common understanding of the business domain across different teams.
- Quick Insights: You can surface domain knowledge very quickly, even within a few hours.
- Aligns Business and IT: By focusing on business events rather than technical implementation, it aligns both business and technical stakeholders.
- Discovers Unknowns: The informal nature of the process often surfaces hidden complexities or gaps in understanding that might otherwise go unnoticed.
In summary, Big Picture Event Storming helps break down communication barriers, align teams, and expose hidden issues within a business domain, all while remaining fast-paced and collaborative. It’s an effective starting point for further, more detailed exploration and process refinement.