This is a summary of the talk by Simon Brown given at SC London 2019.
Simon Brown
Simon is an independent consultant specialised in software architecture. He said we should “Stop diagramming and start modelling”.
Upfront design
When we started with agile, the assumption was that we could do no more upfront planning and design. That’s wrong. We should work together on some design, up to a certain level.
UML is a useful tool for this, but somehow we all lost the knowledge about UML. It’s useful because we don’t have to come up with our own visualisation and ask each other questions like ‘what does that arrow mean’, ‘why are some boxes red’.
Brown is the creator of Structurizr. An application which allows you to model your software using the C4 (Context, Containers, Components and Code) architecture model.
Key takeaways
- “The value is in the conversation” only works if you’re having the right conversations
- up front design is not necessarily about creating a perfect end-state or complete architecture
