How to Understand Almost Anything (Book)
How to Understand Almost Anything - A Practitioner's Guide to Domain Analysis (out Spring 2023)
Domain analysis is about understanding a body of knowledge, the subject matter of a domain. You want to understand the concepts, vocabulary, rules and constraints that govern the domain. Ultimately, the goal is to define a set of abstractions and their relationships, a formal model, a “language” that can be used to completely and unambiguously describe the subject matter in the domain.
This book explains how to do this. At the core of the book are three sections that cover the three aspects of domain analysis: collecting, thinking and validating. Then there’s a chapter about recurring ideas and concepts when defining abstractions. You can use those as reminders — or a checklist — of what to think about when designing your abstractions. The last chapter of the book zooms out beyond the core domain analysis activities and discusses a few related issues such as agility, business strategy and process change. It also has a section with a few tips on writing.
The book will be out (via self-publishing) in Spring 2023 as an eBook and most likely also as a softcover print version. Perhaps I can convince myself to record an audio book as well.