4 ms·

You're going to get a fair amount of hate for mentioning the word "architect" here. They go into the same naughty list as manual testers, Scrum masters and rele

You're going to get a fair amount of hate for mentioning the word "architect" here. They go into the same naughty list as manual testers, Scrum masters and release managers! Despite this, they can be very necessary for large orgs. I've used Ardoq in the past, decent tool. All manual. Sparx EA looks very similar to visio and heavily TOGAF influenced. Both models are tough to create and maintain. A DSL in their own right. No one really cares about architecture diagrams until they're really needed i.e platform migrations, rewrites, onboarding new staff, better reserve instance pricing. I've seen 6 different development teams all write architecture diagrams differently. All of them out of date and inconsistent. I do think there is an opportunity here to build something more useful, the difficulty I see is that architecture is quite dependent on perspective. Security sees perimeters and firewalls, development sees microservices and DBs, DevOps see VPCs and networking. I did come across weave works visualisation tools for Kubernetes that seem impressive and an OpenSource project but haven't had a chance to play with it yet. You're right in your initial assumption that there is nothing out there to model architecture easily. Visio is as good as we have right now.

molteanu 8y ago
Do point towards the "architect" hate pages, please. You've piqued my interest.
- ilikerashers 8y ago
  Scan up and down this thread. Comments are saying he/she shouldn't have a job, he/she should be writing code instead, who is h/shee to dictate to delivery teams. This was posted a few weeks back by a DRI in Stripe, https://hyperbo.la/w/aws-org-chart/ https://hyperbo.la/w/aws-org-chart/, which sounds alot like what traditional architects do. Nobody showed any interest. Anytime I've attempted to raise a discussion on this it gets shut down quickly. Yeap, maybe hate is a strong term. Certainly bad feeling towards the practice.
  - m-i-l 8y ago
    The analogy I sometimes use is that you don't need an architect to design a garden shed, but you do for a house which is much larger, has complex integrations with plumbing, electrics etc., plus building regulations to comply with, etc. A lot of dev work, especially in smaller companies, is building garden sheds, i.e. small single purpose self contained apps, but that doesn't mean every building is a garden shed.
    - ilikerashers 8y ago
      I like that. The logic is often "I worked on a team that didn't require an architect, therefore no teams require architects". I do readily admit there are quite a few hapless architects out there though.

molteanu 8y ago

Do point towards the "architect" hate pages, please. You've piqued my interest.

ilikerashers 8y ago
Scan up and down this thread. Comments are saying he/she shouldn't have a job, he/she should be writing code instead, who is h/shee to dictate to delivery teams. This was posted a few weeks back by a DRI in Stripe, https://hyperbo.la/w/aws-org-chart/ https://hyperbo.la/w/aws-org-chart/, which sounds alot like what traditional architects do. Nobody showed any interest. Anytime I've attempted to raise a discussion on this it gets shut down quickly. Yeap, maybe hate is a strong term. Certainly bad feeling towards the practice.
- m-i-l 8y ago
  The analogy I sometimes use is that you don't need an architect to design a garden shed, but you do for a house which is much larger, has complex integrations with plumbing, electrics etc., plus building regulations to comply with, etc. A lot of dev work, especially in smaller companies, is building garden sheds, i.e. small single purpose self contained apps, but that doesn't mean every building is a garden shed.
  - ilikerashers 8y ago
    I like that. The logic is often "I worked on a team that didn't require an architect, therefore no teams require architects". I do readily admit there are quite a few hapless architects out there though.