Member-only story
Strategic DDD: The Power Dynamics of Upstream/Downstream Relationships
Welcome to our exploration of Domain-Driven Design’s strategic patterns! In this post, we’ll do a deep dive into one of the fundamental bounded context relationships: the Upstream/Downstream pattern.
This was initially posted in my newsletter BuildItSimple!, if you don’t have a medium membership, you can read it here:
Understanding Upstream/Downstream
Think of this relationship like a river system — while the upstream flow affects everything downstream, what happens downstream doesn’t impact the upstream flow. In software architecture, this creates a clear power dynamic between contexts, where downstream teams must adapt to changes made upstream, but not vice versa.
Detailed Analysis
The upstream/downstream relationship establishes a clear dependency direction between contexts. The success of downstream teams depends on the upstream context, while the upstream context can evolve independently. This asymmetric relationship is…
