Domain-Driven Design at Elia
Domain-Driven Design at Elia
Society is evolving rapidly due to climate change, digital disruption, and the electrification of everything. This dynamic environment challenges Transmission System Operators (TSOs) like Elia.
Elia's IT landscape is increasingly difficult to understand; changes carry wide impacts and risks, and managing end-to-end solutions has become challenging. The existing monolithic structures hinder agility, making it essential to transition to a more agile and adaptable framework.
To address these issues, Elia sought INNOCOM's expertise to build the bridge between IT and business using domain-driven design. A proof-of-concept has been set up to immediately test a new way of working together in practice. The goal is to achieve faster time to market for new business requirements with more flexibility and to test that the solution can be run in a more future-proof, data- and cloud-enabled way.
This resulted in an event-storming workshop to help Elia get the functional & technical decomposition of the solution landscape right and jumpstart development.
Creating this ‘cookbook’ together will result in a more agile, resilient, and innovative approach that will be used as a template for all future projects. This will ensure that Elia continues to meet its business goals and deliver reliable service in an ever-evolving landscape.
Challenges
Elia must expand their networks and develop innovative solutions swiftly while ensuring reliable service. However, they face significant hurdles:
- Business goals and deliverables are changing rapidly.
- The complexity of the IT application and integration landscape is growing exponentially.
- There is an urgent need for a reference technical architecture that leverages cloud possibilities.
Answer
The workshop focused on several key areas:
- Agility and Product Focus: Adopting an agile mindset with multidisciplinary teams working together to deliver end-to-end value.
- NEST Framework: Implementing the NEST framework to accelerate development and streamline processes.
- Architectural Decomposition: Moving away from monolithic structures by decomposing the business and application landscape into smaller, manageable services.
- Bounded Contexts and Integration Patterns: Dividing the landscape into bounded contexts with a shared language and defining integration patterns to manage translation between different systems.
- Reusable CookBook Approach: Developing a reusable methodology (CookBook) for both greenfield and brownfield projects to ensure consistency and efficiency.
- Private Cloud Readiness: Preparing for a transition to a private cloud environment (EDP) with a reference architecture that leverages cloud possibilities and supports a composable, reusable architecture that can be continuously adjusted.
Effect
By implementing these solutions, Elia aims to achieve several key outcomes:
- Deployable Working Code: Creating and deploying working code in a containerized environment, enhancing flexibility and scalability.
- Multidisciplinary Team Success: Fostering thriving, enthusiastic multidisciplinary teams that deliver more value collaboratively.
- Reusable Methodology: Establishing checklists and methodologies that can be reused across various projects, ensuring smooth handover between business, architecture, and IT.
