Visualising software architecture with the C4 model - Simon Brown, Agile on the Beach 2019

In Simon Brown’s talk at AOTB 2019 he explores the visual communication of software architecture based upon a decade of Simon’s experiences working with software development teams large and small across the globe. He looks at what is commonplace today, the importance of creating a shared vocabulary, diagram notation, and the value of creating a lightweight model to describe your software system using the “C4 model”, which he created as a way to help software development teams describe and communicate software architecture, both during up-front design sessions and when retrospectively documenting an existing codebase. It’s very likely that the majority of the software architecture diagrams you’ve seen are a confused mess of boxes and lines. Following the publication of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development in 2001, teams have abandoned UML, discarded the concept of modelling and instead place a heavy reliance on conversations centered around incoherent whiteboard diagrams or shallow “