In recent years, domain driven design (DDD), as a software design method, has gradually become popular in the industry and formed several inherent paradigms of application, namely domain driven design pattern (DDDP). However, the software development community still lacks a comprehensive understanding of the role of DDDP in software projects. Objective:This study aims to reveal the application status of DDDP, including which DDDP is applied to software development, the benefits, challenges, and mitigation methods for challenges. Methods:In our study, a systematic literature review is performed to identify, screen, summarize and analyze the relevant literature published between 2003 and July 2019. Results:Through the combination of manual retrieval, automatic retrieval and snowballing, this paper covered 1 884 relevant literatures, and after screening, 26 high-quality literatures were finally obtained, corresponding to 26 independent studies. This study summarized theoverview of DDDP in the primarystudies, including the 11 benefits, 17 challenges and the mitigation methods of challenges for the DDDP which applied in software development. Conclusion:DDD can help practitioners design software better since its prominent emphasis on domain knowledge, but there are still some challenges when applying DDD patterns. While these mitigation methods may tacklethe challenges to a certain extent, there are also some deficiencies remained. This study fills in the knowledge gaps in this field through SLR. Considering the mismatch between the practical value of DDDP and the current theoretical maturity, the industry and academia should pay more attention to this field in the future.