Sequence diagrams that are understandable to everyone on your team — ⚡ Tl;dr Even though sequence diagrams are suited to visualizing low-level technical details, they are often used to communicate high-level flows with product and business stakeholders. At IcePanel we’re focused on making sequence diagrams easily understandable to your technical and non-technical team members. This article goes through some of the design decisions…

Sticky notes for whiteboarding and collaborating on your system designs with the C4 model — ⚡ Tl;dr The C4 model is a simple standard for visualizing software architecture for technical and non-technical audiences. We created these C4 model sticky notes for in-person whiteboarding and collaboration sessions with your team. They come in internal and external styles. 🚀 Let’s kick-off Before we get started, if you’re unfamiliar with the C4 model…

Visual and code-based diagramming and modelling tools for the C4 model — ⚡ Tl;dr The C4 model is a simple standard for visualizing software architecture for technical and non-technical audiences. Some tools in this article have great built-in support for the C4 model, and some of them have partial or plugin-assisted support. 🚀 Let’s kick-off The C4 model is a simple standard for visualizing software architecture for…

Advantages and disadvantages of the most common software architecture patterns — ⚡ Tl;dr A monolithic application is a software application compiled into a single executable, usually stored in a single source control repository. Microservice architectures include a series of independently developed and deployable services, stored in separate source control repositories or a mono repo. Even though they may be seen as “uncool”, monolithic…

Comparing 7 popular languages for designing and modelling software systems — 🚀 Let’s kick-off Due to the complex nature of software, there has always been a need to graphically visualize and communicate software architectures with others. Modelling and diagramming these systems and their abstractions allows us to analyze and improve the designs, resulting in higher-quality implementations when building them.

The C4 model is a simple way to diagram software architecture consisting of just 2 things — ⚡ Tl;dr The C4 model is a simple standard for visualizing software architecture for technical and non-technical audiences. The C4 model is essentially just two things, a hierarchical set of common abstractions and four diagram types. 🚀 Let’s kick-off The C4 model is a lightweight standard for hierarchically visualizing software architectures. Each C4 level is…

6 common mistakes in software architecture diagrams and how to avoid them — ⚡ Tl;dr Diagrams are the bread and butter of explaining how software systems work to many architects and engineers. Unfortunately, they are usually hard to read and understand due to a few surprisingly simple mistakes. By fixing these common mistakes, you can make your diagrams useful to the people they are intended…

The best free and paid tools to diagram your software architecture — ⚡ Tl;dr Software architecture tools can be categorized into three groups, modelling tools, diagrams as code and diagramming tools. Diagramming is best for quick sketches in conversation and experimentation of ideas. 🚀 Let’s kick-off Diagramming software architecture provides several benefits to communicating complexity. …

🚀 Let’s kick-off We’ve collected our top five favourite IcePanel features that you may not have noticed right away when exploring the tool. They are features that we believe will improve your workflow and efficiency in the tool to help you become a power user. 1️⃣ Dynamically show and hide diagram objects Tags in IcePanel can dynamically show or hide…