Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software

A Sobering Decision
You might reasonably assume that we would have been elated at this point. We were not. We
were under a severe deadline; the project was already dangerously behind schedule. Our
dominant emotion was fear.
The gospel of refactoring is that you always go in small steps, always keeping everything working.
But to refactor our code to this new model would require changing a lot of supporting code, and
there would be few, if any, stable stopping points in between. We could see some small
improvements we could make, but none that would take us closer to the new concept. We could
see a sequence of small steps to get there, but parts of the application would be disabled along the
way. And this was before the age when automated tests were widely used on such projects. We
had none, so there was bound to be unforeseen breakage.
And it was going to take effort. We were already exhausted from months of pushing.
At this point, we had a meeting with our project manager that I will never forget. Our manager
was an intelligent and bold man. He asked a series of questions:
Q1:
How long would it take to get back to current functionality with the new design?
A1:
About three weeks.
Q2:
Could we solve the problems without it?
A2:
Probably. But no way to be sure.
Q3:
Would we be able to move forward in the next release if we didn't do it now?
A3:
Forward movement would be slow without the change. And the change would be much
harder once we had an installed base.
Q4:
Did 
we
think it was the right thing to do?
A4:
We knew the political situation was unstable, so we'd cope if we had to. And we were
tired. But, yes, it was a simpler solution that fit the business much better. In the long
run it was lower risk.
He gave us the go-ahead and told us he would handle the heat. I've always had tremendous
admiration for the courage and trust it took for him to make that decision.

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We busted our butts and got it done in three weeks. It was a big job, but it went surprisingly
smoothly.