Context Mapping

The practice of describing how bounded contexts depend on each other and how teams collaborate across those boundaries.

Context mapping is how you describe the relationships between bounded contexts: who depends on whom, who has the upper hand in shaping contracts, and what kind of integration sits between them.

A context map captures a few things for each integration point:

• The touch points between contexts.
• The contract. What's the shape of the data that crosses the boundary?
• The relationship type. Is one team upstream, dictating terms? Are they peers? Do they share a small piece of the model on purpose (Shared Kernel)?

Context mapping pays off most when teams are about to integrate, when bounded contexts are being split, or when a system that grew organically has stopped behaving like a coherent whole. Real-world context mapping can happen during a Big Picture Event Storming session with the teams involved.