Comment by Msurrow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Msurrow | Hacker News Reader

Well, you need to use an architecture modelling tool to work [efficiently] with architecture models.

Here are some I know of:

Sparx’s Enterprice Architect

NoMagic’s MagicDraw

Qualiware

Achimate (the tool, not the standard)

There are surely more out there. I know both Sparx and MagicDraw have the possibility to write your own custom plugins for the tool. If you are in a big enough shop that will become very handy at some point. Qualiware have better publication options than the others, as far as I know, but not completely sure. The Archimate tool probably only supports the Archimate notation standard, where as the others support BPMN, UML, DMN etc. So I’d go for those, unless you are really heavy into TOGAF, then Archimate may make sense.

Edit: these are “big” tools that can do alot of differnet stuff and you wont ever need all of the features in one of them. But also means you need to dedicate some time to learn how to use it (alot more time than you needed to learn PP or Visio)

If you want to keep everything up to date I recommend checking your diagrams in with your code. GitLab has support for plantUML https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/administration/integration/plantu... and Mermaid https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/markdown.html#mermaid

To add to this: I highly recommend reading into INCOSE's standards and recommendations on SysML.

Start by going through one of their last talks: https://sdincose.org/rsvpmaker/state-of-sysml-2018-09-12/

EA is effectively a database of design artifacts, models and components so you can draw different viewpoints of a system and previously defined relationships are automatically displayed. Plantuml, which I love, can't do any of that.

EA also auto generates documentation in Office formats which is handy when submitting a design for review and comment.

A lot of other commentators will point out that UML is redundant, but in big enterprise system development it is still a useful design tool to start a discussion and not too onerous to keep up to date. Whilst even at enterprise scale you still want to evolve architecture as per Agile best practice, things take a little longer and there are more hoops to jump through and this is where well documented architecture always shines through.

I agree that the first important step is from drawing to modelling. Having a single model means that all your drawings are (and stay) consistent.

The next step is the integration with the surroundings to keep the architecture model consistent with the code and the requirements. For the code, the usual way is generate code from the model. That is tricky and has a bad reputation because it is hard to get right. For requirements, the question is whether you actually track them (probably no in SaaS/Web environment; probably yes in embedded).

What I'm not sure about: In theory the integration tests should be derived from the software architecture, but I have you to see even ideas for tool support there.

Nice thing about e.g. EA is that your aren't just drawing pictures. You're able to collaborate on models that are surfaced on views, so a change is global and you can see where else e.g. a component is used.

These recommendations are a time capsule from the 90s.

Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on whats good 2018 recommendations?

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