Collaborative Software Design: How to facilitate domain modeling decisions

Software is becoming more central to our lives every day, yet creating high-quality software systems remains a significant challenge. This issue largely arises because many software teams focus too heavily on finding solutions rather than understanding the organisational context. To effectively address this, developers must engage and communicate with relevant stakeholders, cutting across various organisational settings and contexts. However, communication with the business side is fraught with potential pitfalls: misunderstandings can occur, individuals may feel intimidated to speak up, tensions might escalate, and conflicts can emerge. These social dynamics can lead to a breakdown in knowledge sharing, manifesting in resistance behaviours ranging from sarcastic comments to complete disengagement or even leaving discussions altogether. As a result, many organisations default to a more autocratic decision-making style, where a single individual, typically the architect, analyses the situation and makes decisions. However, to achieve sustainable and widely supported design decisions for our architecture, it's more effective to employ visual techniques to make assumptions clearer, which in turn improves collaboration between developer teams and domain experts. In this talk, we will explore collaborative modelling and the social dynamic challenges it presents. Collaborative modelling is a visualisation technique designed to analyse complex and dispute-ridden decision-making processes, bringing together all relevant stakeholders and decision-makers to develop a common understanding. A significant aspect of this approach is the facilitation of sessions to ensure everyone feels included in the decision-making process and is able to contribute their insights. We will highlight the importance of developing a diverse skill set that includes observing, listening, remaining neutral, and showing empathy to foster better collaboration. The objective is to enable software teams to collaborate with their stakeholders, understand their needs, and allow this understanding to guide their software architecture. This is the core of what we define as engaging in collaborative software design!