Introducing ContextFlow
I got so inspired by Susanne Kaiser’s Architecture for Flow book after reading Part I that, rather than finish the book, I developed ContextFlow. ContextFlow is a newborn, so like all babies it’s currently lacking in abilities and has a face only a mother could love, but hopefully it grows into something truly amazing. It incorporates ideas from Susanne’s book, the DDD crew bounded context canvas, Nick Tune’s domain distillation, and much much more.
I built it quickly last week as a learning exercise, so there are mistakes and missing aspects. For example:
- Wardley map in strategic view is missing user needs and problem/solution space distinction in value chain, and probably other things (sorry Simon Wardley, we’ll fix it soon!)
- Flow view right now is more to do with value stream than actual team flow (I’m thinking of developing an integrated but separate tool for team flow, like I did with CodeCohesion)
- Team Topologies aspect in the tool is mostly handwaving).
- Let me know if you see anything else wrong or missing…
Big thanks to Chris Simon for improvement suggestions, especially the nascent temporal evolution feature in Strategy view.
Check out the demo and the sample projects (n.b. all data is adapted, and does not reflect actual project realities).
ContextFlow is open source to follow the Wardley Mapping gameplay of using open approaches to accelerate evolution.
Ideas, feedback, and suggestions are all welcome!
Now I’ll get back to finishing Susanne Kaiser’s book, I promise! :)