Domain Governance

Why This Exists

This document defines how the Algosure Domain Model is governed.

Owner

The owner is the Chief Product Officer and Enterprise Architect.

Business Value

Governance protects the Domain Model from drift. It ensures that new capabilities, APIs, events, AI behaviors, and modules remain aligned to business ownership.

Governance Principles

Principle	Meaning
One Concept, One Owner	Every business concept has one authoritative domain.
Architecture Mirror Principle	Software architecture must mirror the business organization and Digital Procurement Company model.
Business First, Technology Second	Domains are defined by business responsibility, not tooling.
Explicit Boundaries	Domains communicate through APIs, events, commands, and references.
Event Accountability	Events are owned by source domains and consumed under consumer rules.
AI Respects Ownership	Intelligence may reason and recommend but must not mutate source facts outside approved commands.
Modulith Alignment	Spring Boot modules should reflect domain boundaries and enforce modularity.

Governance Responsibilities

Area	Governance responsibility
Domain creation	New domains require clear ownership, scope, business value, and relationship to existing domains.
Concept ownership	Concepts must not be duplicated across domains.
API design	APIs must respect aggregate ownership and command responsibility.
Event design	Events must be meaningful, versioned, and source-owned.
Database design	Storage must not bypass domain ownership.
AI behavior	AI outputs must cite owning domain context and respect mutation guardrails.
Documentation	Domain documents must use YAML front matter, DDD language, diagrams where useful, and consistent structure.
Modulith implementation	Module boundaries must match the documented domain map.

Governance Workflow

flowchart LR
    Proposal[Change proposal]
    Ownership[Ownership review]
    Impact[Relationship and event impact]
    Documentation[Documentation update]
    Implementation[Modulith implementation]
    Validation[Build and boundary validation]

    Proposal --> Ownership
    Ownership --> Impact
    Impact --> Documentation
    Documentation --> Implementation
    Implementation --> Validation

Adding A New Capability

Every capability must map to:

• Practice.
• Digital Professional.
• SOP.
• KPI.
• Data.
• Business outcome.
• Owning domain.
• Source events or commands where applicable.

If a capability cannot identify an owning domain, it is not ready for implementation.

Adding A New Event

A new event must define:

• Source domain.
• Trigger.
• Payload.
• Metadata.
• Consumers.
• Business value.
• Versioning strategy.
• Ownership boundary.

Adding A New API

A new API must define:

• Owning domain.
• Aggregate or workflow responsibility.
• Command or query type.
• Authorization requirements.
• Cross-domain references.
• Events emitted.
• Error and audit behavior.

Administration And Governance

Administration owns platform governance workflows and policy configuration records. It does not replace domain governance ownership. Domain ownership remains with the documented source domain.

Validation Expectations

At minimum, domain governance changes should pass:

• MkDocs strict build.
• Navigation validation.
• Review for ownership duplication.
• Review for event and API boundary correctness.
• Future Spring Boot Modulith boundary tests when implementation exists.