I'm a software engineer with experience across the software development lifecycle. My primary interest is software development methodologies and software process improvement.
Although all these points are valid, I wonder if the idea of UML Modes has some impact on this. Diagramming tools are more useful for sketches and notes that have a limited lifespan - they are used and then either discarded or relegated as notes of the discussion rather than continued documentation of the system. Modeling tools are more appropriate as blueprints or some other form of long-lived documentation.
I see tools like Visio and draw.io / diagrams.net as being digital equivalent to whiteboarding. But whiteboarding has its place, but it's a different place than modeling. The question to ask is if you are making a model of your system or creating a diagram of your system. The answer will drive what tools are best suited to the problem.
Author "Software Architecture for Developers" | Creator of the "C4 model for visualising software architecture" | Founder at Structurizr | Software architecture training at architectis.je
There are certainly different uses for software architecture diagrams, yes. If I'm doing an up front design exercise, I'll tend to use a whiteboard or flip chart paper. This allows me to focus on sketching out ideas, and it's much easier to do collaborative design with a larger physical space. I'd still use the C4 model (in terms of the abstractions and hierarchical diagrams), but I might not necessarily follow all of the notation guidance. These diagrams tend to form a starting point, and they are usually short-lived. Once we start coding, and I want to start creating long-lived documentation, I'll switch to a tool. Another use case for a tool is for proposal/pre-sales purposes, where you want to show some software architecture diagrams to accompany a "this is our plan" type presentation. Those diagrams tend to be quite short-lived too.
Ignoring up front design (where I still think a whiteboard is the best option), I think we can do better as software engineers, and I don't think we should be using general purpose diagramming tools at all for the creation of software architecture diagrams ... short or long-lived. "Modelling" has some unfortunate associations with heavyweight design processes, but I believe that we can change that with better tooling, as I illustrated in Modelling software architecture with PlantUML, for example. My goal is to help teams create better looking, and more consistent, software architecture diagrams more quickly than they can with a general purpose diagramming tool.
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Although all these points are valid, I wonder if the idea of UML Modes has some impact on this. Diagramming tools are more useful for sketches and notes that have a limited lifespan - they are used and then either discarded or relegated as notes of the discussion rather than continued documentation of the system. Modeling tools are more appropriate as blueprints or some other form of long-lived documentation.
I see tools like Visio and draw.io / diagrams.net as being digital equivalent to whiteboarding. But whiteboarding has its place, but it's a different place than modeling. The question to ask is if you are making a model of your system or creating a diagram of your system. The answer will drive what tools are best suited to the problem.
There are certainly different uses for software architecture diagrams, yes. If I'm doing an up front design exercise, I'll tend to use a whiteboard or flip chart paper. This allows me to focus on sketching out ideas, and it's much easier to do collaborative design with a larger physical space. I'd still use the C4 model (in terms of the abstractions and hierarchical diagrams), but I might not necessarily follow all of the notation guidance. These diagrams tend to form a starting point, and they are usually short-lived. Once we start coding, and I want to start creating long-lived documentation, I'll switch to a tool. Another use case for a tool is for proposal/pre-sales purposes, where you want to show some software architecture diagrams to accompany a "this is our plan" type presentation. Those diagrams tend to be quite short-lived too.
Ignoring up front design (where I still think a whiteboard is the best option), I think we can do better as software engineers, and I don't think we should be using general purpose diagramming tools at all for the creation of software architecture diagrams ... short or long-lived. "Modelling" has some unfortunate associations with heavyweight design processes, but I believe that we can change that with better tooling, as I illustrated in Modelling software architecture with PlantUML, for example. My goal is to help teams create better looking, and more consistent, software architecture diagrams more quickly than they can with a general purpose diagramming tool.