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# How We Waste Time Building APIs — and the Moment DDD Starts to Matter


- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe - Virtual Stage

## Description

Is Domain-Driven Design just a theoretical concept?

When working in the trenches, most teams don’t start with Bounded Contexts or Context Maps.
They start with tickets, acceptance criteria, and... the need to ship APIs!


Over time, APIs grow. New consumers appear. Shared resources emerge.
And suddenly teams struggle with questions like:

- Who owns this API?

- Can we change this contract?

- Why does every small decision require an architect?

In this talk, I’ll tell the story of how teams naturally evolve APIs in chaos — and why this is not a failure.


I’ll show the moment when Domain-Driven Design stops being theoretical and becomes a practical decision-making tool: helping teams reason about relationships between bounded contexts, ownership, and autonomy — without “doing full DDD”.


This is not a tutorial.


It’s a provocative look at how strategic DDD can support evolutionary API design and team autonomy in large systems.

## Speaker

### [Jacek Milewski](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@jacek-milewski)

IT Trainer | DDD Architect | Developer | Consultant | Speaker | Mentor


## Related talks at this congress

- [For the REST of us: API First and Conway’s Law](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe-virtual-stage/sessions/1538-for-the-rest-of-us) — Michael Jaeger
- [Thoughts on (Modern?) Software Development - Observations From a 21-Year Journey](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe-virtual-stage/sessions/1627-thoughts-on-modern) — Alex Thurow
- [Why Systems Break After Initial Success: The Architectural Failures That Take Months to Surface](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe-virtual-stage/sessions/1649-why-systems-break) — Christian Del Monte
- [MAD About Software Design - When AI Architects Argue](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe-virtual-stage/sessions/1569-mad-about-software) — Lior Schejter