 Welcome everyone to Get Ready for the Storm remote event storming in action by Karan Rai and Giovanni as Prani and DTI. Without further delay over to you. Welcome to the remote event storming session. I'm Karan and Giovanni and I have them with me as my colleagues. So we're not going to bother you with introductions or save you that time. You can read about us from our profiles on LinkedIn and on on address India's pages. And we'll take you straight to what you've come here for which is to event storm. So our goal for the next one hour is to introduce you to events storming and it's core concepts. And help you get comfortable with the process so that you can also apply it with your teams and organizations. It's an emerging methodology to discover domains. And then it's a great exercise to arrive at a common point of understanding between different stakeholders. So we'll take you through only the core concepts. And then then we'll practice it together. Yes, just a little thing that we won't go in full depth in everything that what you want to achieve here is to give you enough knowledge so you can get started and you know, going more depth by yourself. Yeah. Yeah, so this is how we plan to achieve it. We'll start by spending a little bit of time on the history and core concepts and application areas. There aren't many core concepts it's very easy to adopt and that's why this approach is really easy. We will then introduce an interesting business case and we'll practice event storming together. The concepts that you that we will explain the first 15 minutes should be sufficient to help you get started. And as you work through the event storming workshop, we will also help and guide you through the process and explain detailed concepts as you come across them so so that you can understand them in a more contextual setting. Finally, after the event storming, we will regroup to discuss our key learnings and reflect on how we can build on what we have learned. We will also share links and resources so that you can refer them and continue to do your research and understand the topic better. So let's start with learning more about events storming and I'll hand over to Gio to take you through the core concepts. Okay, so as you can see from the slides is a workshop style technique to bring stakeholders together to explore complex business domains, which means in practice bringing people together that maybe know a system or need to create a system so they can talk and somehow share their knowledge and realize a common view of what the system is, or the domain is, yeah, was invented by Alberto Brandolini in 2012. And a very important aim for the technique is actually for these stakeholders to reach some form of common understanding. We'll give you examples of this as we proceed. This is how an in-person one would look, this is a very small one so you don't see any people, imagine people here talking and debating and attaching notes there. So what you don't see in the board but is important for the event storm that is a timeline on the land is so from left to right is how things happen in a timeline. So events, in fact, is things that happen to the system or things that the system does. There are many application areas so some understanding business processes always say in a big company, things get done, there are maybe silos doing bits, parts of the process and nobody knows the process in its entirety and they want to change it to make it more streamlined. In those situations stakeholders from the different silos can go to a room or a virtual one if it is remote and start using event storming to put what they know about the system. So and discuss that and sometimes debate or reach or find these agreements and then reach to a point where everybody has actually the same view of what is actually happening. Because from that point on you can you know how to streamline the system for example you can decide what actions to take to make it better. Yeah, but is also discovery for new systems and applications so you know this is something we do at launch ventures with for example startups people with a great idea, but they don't are quite unsure about you know how to proceed so they have the general abstract idea but it's like there is a need of more detail to do things. And so the event storming is a great way of exploring more details and get a better understanding on what to do. And also model complex systems and interactions as well, any kind of system. One thing that needs to be said is also it comes from the domain driven design community Alberto is part of the community and so somehow some of the, well, many of the concepts are basically mapping into sticky notes of domain driven design ideas. Yeah, the core concept is the concept of event. Yeah, an event is an event that is relevant for the domain expert and contextual for the domain that is being explored. Contextual for the domain means make sense in that particular domain is not something that necessarily make sense in more than one domain, we will see some example about that. And this an event is a verb at the past tense, you know something happened, this is to give you to put to help putting focus in the system in the way in a way that makes some sort of sense so the system has done this then what happens next is that. Let's see, start with a tiny example. So let's say some invoicing system that does some invoicing at the end of each month. So, in some way the end of the month process has been started. There is a billable amount calculated, and then it's verified and after that the most is prepared something like this but then also notice the orange notes are the events. There are these red ones that are called hotspots in this kind of notes and these ones are about comments disagreements we say, while you do this. Some people say hold on, we know that calculating this is really, you know, nobody really knows how to do that and put another billable amount well this is a very long process takes ages so and put a comment that these are actually very interesting because this could be spark conversations and maybe there is somebody in the room that actually knows how those things work and so that could be further exploration of the system to improve the situation yeah. Of course you can start like this but then you can go and add more and more details so don't be scared by by what you see here okay this is exactly what it was before but with more detail so say this yellow note is actually a person that told that does something in the system pushes a button and starts the process so basically says goes to the end of, sorry, you the EOM should have put end of month process so maybe pushes a button and end of month process starts. So one depending on has a policy on to decide which invoices which bills to do the process or the policies something says, when this happens, do that or is, even if then, basically, yeah, is to give more refinement so in this way you can have more depth into this exploration of the process. And then of course there is another system that is the billing system that what it does calculates that and then the green notice data that is the result of the calculation that is given to input to the other process that is verifying the billable amount yeah. So you see is the same thing exactly as before but with a bit more detail the emphasis here is you don't need when you do even saw me to try to do precisely each step, very defined and gone you can go in broad stroke say okay this is more or less very high level what it does now. Let's add more details in the parts in which we are really interested in. Yeah, so you can go with successive refinements if you like. Yeah. There are some key concepts so let's not spend too much time on this right now we'll use this during the workshop. So basically as you can see other concepts, we already seen that is the domain event that is an actor that is basically a person or people in general even a group of them. The system is an automated one could be an IT system could be, you know, something running on WS could be a conveyor belt bringing goods from place A to place B. A policy as I said before you know whenever X happens we do why. It's basically a conditional command decision action intent so you saw this before the person starts the end of month process issues a command to the system that starts the process yeah. The model is about data so events may actually create data that can be read by other events to perform the next steps aggregate less not spend too much time on this this is a slightly more advanced concept. I don't know if we'll manage to reach this during the workshop or not but we'll see a later point if needed and then the hotspots this is actually very interesting is everything that is a comment and uncertainty something even a conflict that is agreement. Taking these notes and putting them in the appropriate place is extremely useful for further exploration and discussion. Yeah. The concepts are linked in this way, so it kind of an actor invokes a command, for example, that is invoked on a system, a policy can involves a command basically you know when this happens do this. Now, this is as a reference, this, this reference will be useful maybe also during the workshop. Yeah. So, later on, when we start the workshop, we can answer your question about this and help you out if there are any problems. But it's basically an idea on how things connect together. The remote Evan storm now, this is what the remote Evan storm looks like this is from a real one. We've done a lunch ventures. It's like the impersonal but instead of having a whiteboard we have a we use mirror boards could be any other electronic board you have is pretty much the same now. And the only thing that you added here that you will you would use also on the impersonal is ubiquitous language is an important concept that is about when you discuss concepts and put in an event so it's important to be on the same page. It's important to avoid using different terms for exactly the same concept because this will cause confusion so every time there is a new important concept is worth actually adding that to the language and agree with the other participants what the meaning is. So everybody will actually understand what is being talked about. Yeah, this is extremely important and this will be very useful as well of course in the workshop. There are a few things to be said about the difference between, you know, being in the same room or being remote, of course, in the same room is the interaction is more natural if you like, you know, that also there are situations where there are multiple parallel conversations or the tools are lower friction everybody knows how to use sticky notes and markers. There are also some side effects of team building, you know, and there are many things that are actually quite good about being in the same room that we don't have in a remote setting, but on the other hand, when in a remote setting there are other advantages. So of course we miss the side conversations are very difficult and somehow can feel a bit more distance and often is also more tiring being on the screen for a few hours can be really really tiring as probably all of us know. Now, on the other hand, there are there is unlimited wall space. So with the brainstorming, even storming you may need a big room if you are in an office with a lot of wall space and lots of sticky notes and markets so we don't have these limitations with the remote part which means can make things a bit easier to organize from this point of view, you know, you have unlimited notes that is no need for markets and then limited wall space. Of course, there is an aspect of learning using the tools like if you're using mirror never done that before this could be, you know, you need to spend some time learning that the side conversations are much more difficult, you know, we are all in the same zoom call, and there is difficult to be, you know, in a smaller group talking so this aspect is a bit problematic and needs more deliberate facilitation as well. There is a so because of the disadvantages that is the need for the facilitators to be more present and more active. On the other hand, a big advantage and this is one of the reasons why we use this a lunch ventures and I have to say we use that this before the motive and storming was even a thing. Well before COVID times, but for the specific reasons that is no need to travel. So we have international customers. The core of our team is based in India but your customers pretty much everywhere and, you know, having to travel for an event storming session from India to the US, or to Europe or somewhere else can be expensive and also problematic to organize, you know, organizing the rooms hotels, everything. And so these for us was one of the big reasons why we use the technique and we think the steel with the even with the disadvantages we talk about is still an extremely useful technique to to use. Yeah. And yeah, I'm done with this and maybe Karen. That is the workshop. Well, I hope that provided a quick overview of events from of course energy or covered quite a few things in the interest of time you know trying to capture at least the core concepts as quickly as we could but don't don't be intimidated if it's too much. All we need to really know to get started is the event, because that's the common interface for all stakeholders everybody understands events. So, for this workshop, we thought about picking a use case a business case, which everybody hopefully is familiar with, and someone everybody's been missing quite a bit, being able to travel. So, we thought how about coming up with a business idea so let's assume all of us are entrepreneurs and we are, or we are part of an executive team, which is coming up with this new business concept of a holiday planning service. So it's a travel agency which provides end to end travel management, everything from helping people plan their itineraries to managing their bookings. There are various aspects in this business now as you can imagine that would happen so we would help, we would understand our customers requirements their preferences, their travel dates will select destinations for them matching their preferences. We'll match their budgets, we could prepare devise itineraries. And finally we help them book their travels stays transfers. So the scope is basically unless it's up to us how much we want to provide in the service. The goal of this exercise is to explore these business processes as a whole, and identify opportunities risks and ideas that will help us provide a great service. So think of it, as I said, as your business that you plan to start and what are the different processes that you will have to model if you had to provide a service like this. Maybe please join the board now so I'll stop sharing now I'll tell you what will happen next. So we'll split in a few rooms. How many of us are here and need to create the rooms. So it's, I can see so 17 participants, including us so it's like 14. Sorry, including them that the calls we are 17 which means is 12 people. Yeah, 12 attendees. I would like to join one of the rooms. Yeah, okay so I was saying, or maybe we can just go into rooms. Yeah, yeah. So I'll create two rooms now. Let me also do something else. Yeah, so if you can start exploring the ball please join there. While you create the rooms here I can just give a quick. Yes, please. A quick reference tutorial of how to use me to effectively. Okay. I'll create the rooms and at the frame for the second team. Yeah, yeah, you can do that. I'll just share my screen and take everyone through a few notes. Okay, so this is how me to look like I hope everyone's unlocked in using the meter app, but you could be logged in using the browser, you should be able to see the same view. And you can see that you have our slides here. So there is a quick guide here so generally for events storming it's helpful if you have an external keyboard mouse and monitor. But if you don't that's okay you can still work through. These are just a few shortcuts for you to work through so that makes your makes your work easier and you can focus more on the events from rather than the tool. So adding a sticky note that's really what you need to do. So adding a sticky note is super easy so you can just press the letter and and it pops up this menu and you just press the click on wherever you want to add that note and start typing. Now if you want to copy over this event that's generally a lot easier than creating a new sticky note every time. So all you need to do is command or control D. And it just puts another sticky note right next to it in a sort of sequence, which makes it easy to also progress with events. And you just start typing. And that's how you can just continue to all I'm doing is doing command D because I have a Mac or you could do control D if you have windows. And you can continue to add events to change color just select one sticky note change the color and then if you again do control D and just continues to put sticky notes in that same color. So that's a simple that's all you really need to know. If you want to scroll through you'll probably figure out yourself but if you need to refer this or you can just scroll with your mouse across the board if you press your left click and scroll it will help you. Zoom in and yeah that's that's really that's on the shortcut so we have a practice area if you want to just try placing a few events that we have a practice area where you can spend next two to three minutes trying to place sticky notes and I can actually help you. I mean I can guide you whether you know it's it's whether you need any help or. So in this practice area you can zoom in and I'll just add my first note. And event, let's say any event. Event storm. Let's remind you try to keep your events in the past tense. There's a reason for that. Stating your events in the past tense makes it more factual more deterministic. And there is less ambiguity around it so it also helps you think about events in a way that they're more deterministic so yeah just go ahead and fire away so start adding a few events here once you feel comfortable. Once you have set up to running a set up the rooms we can start. I would say whoever ends up in room one goes to frame one and room to frame two can ask also use something is in the in the event storming is important to see each other so if you can switch the camera song that will be really useful for the exercise. This is one of the things as well. Okay. Let me. Have we got one participant that just joined. Anyway, I'll create the rooms now so I'll open an opening the rooms that will be deep in one and Karen and the other. I'm, I see the number of participants seems to be increasing so let me do something else maybe current share again the link to me to the chat because the new joiners won't have seen that. The rooms again so to include the new participants. And see. Yeah, so I said cool ends up in room one frame one in middle room to frame two and please switch the cameras on. I'm opening the rooms now. Okay. Okay, so reflections I think if you look at the board now let me let me share also my screen but you look at the board because you love to use it to let me share the screen so I can explain more easily. So, now can you see my, my, my, sorry, my screen. Now, this particular space. Yeah, with the reflections area so to give you where it is is just under the slides. So if you are on your frame on your Evan storm go up and left. And so maybe let's spend on these a couple of minutes adding stickers on what you like, compare how you work you know even storming what what you like and what you don't compare to what you do now. Yeah. And maybe even comments, if you like. Okay, so. And then we can talk a bit about the workshop experience and what you think about the technique. So I think let me see if I can set a timer to give everybody. Is that a timer in this, you know, maybe current maybe you need to set the timer I think you are the owner of the board you must have more more permissions. If you set a two minutes timer so people can add their own reflections. No worries I'm tracking it so I'll just remind everyone. Okay. So what you like what you dislike. And if you want to break the rules and put also some general comments or opinions I will allow you to do that. I'm Italian the laws are there as a general suggestion not to, to be respected. Really, I try to. Also feel free to copy some of those notes you know and paste as well don't so don't don't look at those blue and red sticky notes as the only places where to write you can copy and add more. Yeah, don't feel limited like that. So Johnny and current I mean where can I find more. You know, things to read more on this. Look at my screen. There is a slide with the references there. Some references so one thing that we'll do is we'll export the entire workshop board and make it available to you all. Yeah. Hopefully will will be useful. Yeah. This will also contain something related to how to run the workshop. I don't think we could go on. You can see the slide just before this in references. This is one below references there is a reference plan. So, um, this is a general guide that we sort of found useful and it also borrows from guidance that Alberto who started this methodology. I had suggested. So you can look at this and I can take you quickly through this. So we started with an initial event some of it you'll be able to relate to within perform an event storm. We do an explicit walkthrough once the event storm is completed we verify whether the events are consistent and there aren't any which we're missing and then we try and narrate backwards what narrating backwards means is we look at an event for instance payment completed. We have events that are essential to ensure that this event we can arrive up to this event so we kind of go backwards and see what payment completed did we have a corresponding event which led to this point. Did we have that so so that's what we do and then we have values to keys where we can. This is the extension where we add sticky notes which indicate what are the points in the event from where we are generating value and we are taking away value what are more less efficient approaches more efficient ways of doing things and then we have arrow voting where we look at hotspots and we we align on what are the most important hotspots to address first everybody does. A simple arrow based putting they put arrows on the hotspots that they feel are most important and then the ones the hotspots which have the maximum arrows, we go to those and start discussing those. And then finally from there we have an emergent domain model that starts emerging and so we also have a guideline. Sorry to your you're on mute. I muted myself and then I started talking maybe was a good thing that I muted myself. The high level point of view what what you do the event storm is kind of you describe a domain or a particular process scenario and then the hotspots and some things in the board will give you or with the arrow voting and indication where you want to focus basically in a complex situation you want you don't want to address everything at the same time. Yeah, there are some things that are more important than others to address you decide which ones to address first. And this is also in a situation where you model a new product for a startup you know, this is how the things should work. Yeah. Okay, this is what we want to go how do we get there now well, let's have a look at where we can start here. Yeah. Okay, and then start from that particular point basically don't try to do everything at the same time, which is a general advice. Yeah, so this is basically what you do. Yeah. Right. Thank you. How are we going with the time current. Yeah, we're ready. Okay. Okay, let's give that that is visiting visionary I don't know the name that is still writing what this like. So let's wait until this person finishes and then maybe we can, we can have a quick conversation. Yeah, what do you think. And then we can just take another two minutes. Yeah, has any questions. We. Yes, and we can take those. Also we've got six minutes to to the end. So maybe we can current what do you think we can go to the stickers and then if there are questions people can ask in the meantime. Yeah. Yeah, sure. I think let's, let's start with what we just liked. Yeah, this, the first one is what was there to dislike. Okay, but this one is interesting about the color sticky references so actually that I agree with that complication I myself and when I go with more than three colors have a problem. One thing that I suggest is also because there are also color blind blind people that may have serious trouble with the different colors is where you can also put markers on the notes in terms of you know, and a for an actor I see for a something like this is not that has to be an A or a C but symbols. Yeah, that people can understand so the color whoever understands color will be fine but whoever doesn't will be fine as well. That that's a suggestion that I gave anything to add current team. Yeah, I agree with that. The colors were generally the origin of these colors was because they were they were matched the actual sticky notes and practice the other kind of colors that sticky notes coming. But there is no rule to it. So you said I think that's a good, good idea we could, we could very well put acronyms on top and use it that way. Yeah, that's because that the colors is a common problem. Yeah. And. Okay, so let's see if there is any anything say good insight inputs from all, which are exactly that the purpose of these having say called that's together. And so I think all the things we discussing to be things that people like. Now I've got a question for you so got a few minutes. Are you going to use it at work. Do are you going to give it a go. Do you think you want to try that wants to answer this. You know, wants to answer except from Karen and deeply of course. Yeah. Except me also I just already shared that I'm going to use it next. Yes. Anybody else. Yes. Yes, I definitely plan to do this but I got I already have some ideas, kicking in. Yeah, of course, what we recommend, we recommend is also to look at the references because today, you know, due to time constraints we couldn't go in depth in all the concepts there are some other concepts like the aggregate or pivotal event or other things that we discussed today. But I think our view is that what you've got here is sufficient for you to get started in a good way. Yeah. So we don't already with the things you you know today, you can go a long way with modeling, lots of your domains and processes. Yeah. Just to add to that, what we've also experienced in the past is that this has also turned out to be a great exercise to discover ideas. So it's not always necessary that you need to use this to model technical designs. We could also use it for just thinking about business processes in general. We've often had situations where we've worked with people clients partners who who really found this useful to understand how they should run their business. So that was a great revelation so even before getting into any kind of implementation or implementation. Yeah, I think and the another point that I would like to add is I think, like what current mentioned that they have identified like how they should run their business. I think they've also identified sometimes like the major gaps that their current business process had. And they actually like during the event storming session they actually got various ideas also that how they could improve it because from day to point be like everything was in their mind but when they were putting the stickies it actually became a lot clearer for them also. These are the gaps in our in their business processes as well. So yeah, I think yeah after like the full event storm workshops, like there are definitely some really interesting outputs and definitely some really interesting insights for the business stakeholders and for the technical teams, they definitely come out. Yeah, it's really like interesting to be part of these workshops. One of the things that I feel I could use it is, you know, and I've mentioned it also maybe to explore on how maybe value stream mapping or process mapping could be done. I think Karen and deeply had mentioned that there are certain terminologies which are different for different people. But through this exercise we could come on the same, because different stakeholders might have different definition of the same process or work items so that also through this exercise it will help to get everybody on the same page. Yeah. That's definitely the case I work on systems with banks where they had even in the database for six different representations of time. Now, really different so you can imagine what happens when you do that or they call the same thing like transaction contract deal and you know for five times for exactly the same thing these things reflected in the software itself, which meant maintaining the code was hell. Yeah, because it was very difficult to understand everything what what you are touching. Yeah. Okay, I think time is up. Just waiting for it. That brings us to the end. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Karen. Thank you. Thank you. We've had an amazing session. There were a lot of insights takeaways. We could hear from the participants and all of you participants you were an amazing bunch of participants with a lot of live interaction and engagement. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much.