Let’s face it, most engineers think of diagrams as something boring, lifeless, that ivory-tower architects design to impress business people and other architects.

Have you been there? You’re staring at a tedious, barely intelligible architecture document, nodding along as the architect talks everyone through his or her grandiose vision. Meanwhile, all you can think about is how in the world are you going to write the code for what looks like the design of the next NASA rocket into a 2-week sprint!

It doesn’t have to be like that.

Solution Architecture documents are, in my experience, an incredibly powerful way to bring about clarity and a sense of professionalism to your work.

In a previous role, I spent a lot of time building Solution Architectures for our customers, showing them how our platform would integrate with their specific (often legacy) systems. They had to comply with several requirements and they needed to look well crafted and polished.

Despite the fact that those Solution Architectures were meant for external customers, I quickly discovered an interesting side effect: our internal teams were relying on them to drive their own work and to figure out what needed to be built. Those diagrams took a lot of the guesswork away and gave us a standard point of reference.

In this article, I want to share the 3 areas that I always highlight in my Solution Architecture diagrams and documents: