EventStorming at CodeMash 2024

I was excited to deliver my EventStorming workshop at CodeMash 2024. I’ve been talking with people about EventStorming for awhile now, and it’s good to see “ah ha” moments in those sessions.

Big Picture EventStorming

It was great to be able to introduce Big Picture EventStorming as a way to explore a business domain. I chose a topic that I suspected many would relate to, and it was great to watch the conversations unfold. As I warned those in attendance – my role as the facilitator is to both unleash the chaos and wrangle the chaos. This is a timeboxed exercise and I’ve got the timings and chaos mostly wrangled.

I had 52 people in the beginning of my session and divided the room in half. While people may wonder why I didn’t use the whole room for one discussion – did I mention that it’s a timeboxed exercise and I need to control some of the chaos? Having the room split made it easier for them to work on the stickies and get their thoughts out.

As a facilitator, my role was to make sure that the groups were moving along in their discussions and throughout the various phases. Listening to how they were talking about the topic at hand and discovering people’s understandings – I could see that it was working well.

Process Modeling EventStorming

Dividing the room for into 2 different groups proved even more valuable when I introduced Process Modeling EventStorming. With their discussions from the Big Picture section, I asked each group to choose a process for them to explore. 2 groups, 1 domain – and so many different processes to explore! Each group had trouble deciding which process to explore. One group identified a few processes and then voted on the stickies as to which one to use. I stepped in to assist the other group in choosing a topic within a timely manner.

During Process Modeling EventStorming, a process is explored. Events are placed, then deduped and ordered on a timeline. These are some of the many questions that come up:

• “What happened?”
• “Who is responsible for…?”
• “Under what conditions…?”
• “What systems are impacted?”
• “Who does this?”
• “What are the pain points?”

Walking around and facilitating, it was interesting to hear the different views. One of the groups had a domain expert who owned it. The team was full of questions, and the domain expert had all sorts of answers. It was awesome to watch how it all panned out.

Conclusion

Throughout this workshop, I was able to introduce the concept of EventStorming as well as 2 types of EventStorming sessions – Big Picture and Process Modeling. The attendees were able to experience not only how each of these sessions work, they also were able to see how you can flow from one EventStorming session to another.

They were able to see how things work when you have a domain expert as well as how to bring up the pain points. They knew not to get too wrapped up in the colors and to focus more on the conversations and details. Sticky notes can be rewritten on their assigned colors later when capturing the grammar. Conversations and context capturing first. The 4 hours flew by quickly, and it was great to present this workshop!

Slides are available here!

Special Thanks

There are a few people who I want to give a shoutout to:

• Chris – my awesome proctor! He kept me on time and also helped with tearing down Big Picture and setting up the Process Modeling paper. He also helped with tearing down the workshop and packing it back up. I couldn’t have asked for a better proctor! Thank you!!
• Steve Smith – my boss and a great supporter! He also helped Chris with setting up the Process Modeling paper. Steve was there to see how it played out as well as to support me. I’m excited about our training adventures together. Follow NimblePros for more updates!
• Ilyana Smith – one of my teammates who was there to experience it! It was great to see her, as I don’t get to see her often and am really excited for her and her adventures.
• Jeffrey Miller – long time tech community friend! Thank you for this great write-up on LinkedIn as well as capturing me in action!
• The Sadukelets – These guys were helping me unpack and get set up right after breakfast. They helped me move tables, set out stickies and markers, and helped hang the first roll of paper. During the first part of the session, they sat on the ground to the left of me and were excited to see Mama presenting a workshop. Thank you for your help!