An order aggregate containing its lines, its shipments, its refunds and its notes, loaded in full to change a delivery address.
the question that redraws it: what must be consistent
within a single transaction?
order + lines yes — the total depends on them
order + shipments no — a shipment is created later,
by a different process, and
its own consistency rules
order + refunds no — same
order + notes no — a note has no invariant at all
result: one aggregate becomes four, and the address change
loads 3 rows instead of 240.
Drawing the boundary by what belongs together in a sentence produces large aggregates, because English groups things by association and transactions do not. The consistency question gives a smaller answer nearly every time, and the smaller answer is what makes concurrent edits possible — two people touching the same order for different reasons stop colliding once they are touching different aggregates.