Software Architect Phil Wills, guardian.co.uk

Phil Wills spent his university career studying Physics, but having realised he probably wasn't going to be an astronaut, opted for the next best thing: a career in software development for the web.

Phil has experience with a broad range of languages and technologies, but has spent the past three years focussing on redevloping guardian.co.uk with a focus on building a strong domain model and achieving high performance.

Presentation: "Rebuilding guardian.co.uk with DDD"

Track: Domain-Driven Design & Development

Time: Thursday 14:15 - 15:15

Location: St. James's Suite

Abstract:

guardian.co.uk is the three times winner of the Webby for best newspaper on the web and the UK's most popular newspaper website, with over 220 million page impressions a month. Over the past three years the platform driving the site has been almost completely rebuilt, by a team that at its peak numbered 104, with the principles of DDD at the heart of the design.

This presentation reviews how key evolutions of our model were driven by domain experts and how DDD encouraged them to have greater investment in the development process.

It also discusses some low-tech practices and tools which helped the design and implementation of the model and some of the remaining challenges we face in maintaining a deep, malleable domain model, whilst still meeting deadlines and addressing the operational needs of the business.