EventStorming board template
EventStorming models a business process as a timeline of the things that happen in it. This board opens empty, with a legend of 8 kinds of sticky note in the corner, so the whole room writes in the same language from the first minute.
Opens a live board in one click. No sign-up: share the link and your team joins.
What is Event Storming?
Event Storming — EventStorming, as its creator Alberto Brandolini writes it — is a workshop in which the people who know a business process and the people who build software for it map it together, as sticky notes on one long wall. Each colour of note is one kind of thing: an event that happened, the command that caused it, the person who gave it, the rule that reacts to it. Read left to right, the wall is the process as it really runs.
What is on the board
The canvas itself starts empty. EventStorming needs room, and the legend floats over the board instead of taking any of it. Drag a note off the legend, or click an entry to drop one in the middle of your view; each note comes out in the right colour and shape for its kind.
- Domain Event
- Something that happened, in past tense. Laid out along the flow of time.
- Command / Action
- A decision to do something. Invoked on a system.
- Hotspot
- A question, risk or disagreement. Mark it and move on.
- Constraint
- A rule that must hold before an event can happen.
- Policy
- Whenever <event>, then <command>. Activated by an event, issues a command.
- Query Model / Information
- What an actor looks at to decide. Results from events.
- External System
- Something a command is invoked on that produces events.
- Actor
- A person who decides to issue a command, informed by a query model.
How to run it
- Storm the eventsEveryone writes orange domain events, in the past tense, and puts them roughly where they happen in time. No discussion yet. Start a ten-minute timer so the room knows how long it has.
- Put them in orderWalk the timeline from left to right. Merge duplicates, fill the gaps, and put a red hotspot on anything people disagree about rather than settling it there and then.
- Add what causes themAdd the commands that trigger events, the actors who issue them, the policies that react to events, the external systems involved and the information people look at to decide.
- Choose what to work onStart dwell voting and let everyone rest on the hotspot that matters most to them. The board shows each note's count and outlines the leader.
- Keep the resultExport the board as an OCIF file to reopen later, or as SVG, PNG or PDF to send round.
Made for a room that is not in one room
Everyone's cursor shows with their name, so you can see who is working where. Spotlight your view when you walk the timeline and everyone follows you; anyone can step away by panning. Guests join with a link and pick a name; nobody needs an account to take part.
The guide to running it remotely goes through a session step by step.