A heuristic is a practical rule that suggests a direction without guaranteeing an optimal answer. For domain boundaries, it helps generate design options and assess trade-offs when competing criteria make a fixed decision procedure impossible. section 9.3
Use heuristics as competing perspectives rather than rigid rules:
- Compare business, domain, organizational, technical, and user-experience perspectives. section 9.5
- Assess trade-offs, including the cost of dependencies and the effects of coupling. section 9.5
- Combine heuristics with EventStorming and Domain Message Flow Modeling, then refine boundaries as complexity and assumptions change. section 9.3 section 9.5
A direction, not a guarantee
“Take the train to work” is a heuristic for arriving quickly, but delays can defeat it. Similarly, a domain-boundary heuristic offers useful direction while requiring additional analysis and judgment. section 9.3
