Domain Driven Design - Can you use a simplified existing Aggregate in a different Aggregate Root

Question

I have an aggregate called Survey - you can create a Survey, send a Survey and respond to a Survey.

I also have an aggregate called Person. They can receive a Survey and respond to a Survey. This aggregate includes demographic information that describes the Person.

I think my Survey aggregate should contain a list of people that have received the Survey. That would include the date they received it and any of their answers, if they have responded. But I feel like I don't need most of the demographic information that would normally come along with my existing Person aggregate.

I tried playing around with different concepts, like calling a send a "Delivery" and calling the employees "Recipients", but the business doesn't speak in those terms. It's just - "I create a Survey and then I send that Survey to people".

So does it make sense to create a different Person aggregate just within Survey? The action of sending a Survey to someone exists as records in the DB, along with responses to the Survey. Is this a better use case for Value Objects?

Answer 1

This is a strategic design problem.

I think you have two Bounded Contexts here, so you should split your Person domain model between them. Person from Survey Context will contain only data and behavior you need for your Surveys. Person from other one (Marketing Context for example) covers marketing team needs.

Here is an example from Martin Fowler's blogpost about BC's

So you're almost right with other aggregate, but it is not a simplified version, it's a separate one.