After some thinking I realized that the answer to developer productivity was sitting right in front of me: Mylyn task context-driven diagrams. Why can't the MDD tooling create and maintain a domain diagram based on the interesting domain elements in the active Mylyn context? There would be no need to create or maintain such a diagram manually: it would always exist, and it would always show only those items that are relevant to the currently active task. Suddenly, purpose-specific diagrams become implied, easy, expected.

I realized that a few simple rules could make such a diagram really work:

• domain elements in the Mylyn context always appear in the diagram
• associations between elements in the diagram are always shown
• removing an element from the Mylyn context causes it to be removed from the diagram
• adding an element to the diagram causes it to be added to the Mylyn context
• diagram elements are positioned according to a default layout algorithm, but remember their positioning if moved manually
• diagram state is saved and associated with the Mylyn task id, such that it is restored when the task is re-activated
• switching active tasks automatically resets the diagram to correspond to the new active task

Now that I've been working with automatic domain diagramming I wonder how I ever got by without. Context-driven diagrams are now an essential part of my toolkit that let me focus on the task at hand without distraction.

From http://greensopinion.blogspot.com