# Dangers of “Task-Board Shuffle” > [!Note] > Treating work as nothing more than moving stickies on a board without regard for underlying design leads to a “Big Ball of Mud” that undermines system architecture and long-term maintainability. The **Task-Board Shuffle** is a counter-productive practice in which a team focuses solely on completing discrete **features**—merely moving stickies from one column to the next—without considering the **architectural** or **domain model** implications of each change. By neglecting the broader design context, development becomes reactive and fragmentary, eroding coherence across the system. Over time, this approach gives rise to a **Big Ball of Mud**—a system characterized by a lack of clear **models**, tangled dependencies, and high **complexity**. Such codebases incur escalating **maintenance costs** and make it difficult to evolve the software in response to new requirements. Without intentional design, every new feature risks amplifying the existing disorder. As an alternative, teams should adopt a **conscious design** mindset for each functionality: analyze every change within its **bounded context**, validate it against the **ubiquitous language**, and implement it in alignment with the system’s **global architecture**. This disciplined approach preserves **modularity**, safeguards **consistency**, and ensures that incremental work contributes to a resilient, evolvable system. --- ## References - Vernon, V. (2016). _Domain-driven design distilled_. Addison-Wesley Professional. - Vernon, V. (2013). _Implementing domain-driven design_. Addison-Wesley Professional. - Khononov, V. (2021). _Learning domain-driven design: Aligning software architecture and business strategy_. O’Reilly Media. - Alammar, J., & Grootendorst, M. (2024). _Hands-on large language models: Language understanding and generation_. O’Reilly Media. - Evans, E. (2003). _Domain-driven design: Tackling complexity in the heart of software_. Addison-Wesley Professional. - Millett, S., & Tune, N. (2015). _Patterns, principles, and practices of domain-driven design._ Wrox.