How to draw 5 types of architectural diagrams

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An architectural diagram is a visual representation that maps out the physical implementation for components of a software system. It shows the general structure of the software system and the associations, limitations, and boundaries between each element.

Software environments are complex, and they aren’t static. New features are frequently added to accommodate growing customer needs and demands. Your team, even those team members who aren’t immersed in the code every day, needs to understand your organization’s software architecture so it can scale seamlessly.

This is where software architecture diagrams come in. They give the entire development team a visual overview making it easier to communicate ideas and key concepts in terms everyone can understand.

Let’s discuss the different types of architectural diagrams and the purpose that each serves. Even learn how you can draw your own software architecture diagrams to encourage team involvement and collaboration. 

Benefits of using software architecture diagrams

In addition to the general fact that visuals help people to retain and recall information longer, software system architecture diagrams offer the following benefits:

• Increase understanding: The diagrams provide an overview of the system, so everybody understands how the different components work together when determining what kind of impact updates and new features will have on the system.
• Improve communication: Software architecture diagrams visualize the game plan for everyone—aligning project goals across all teams, departments, and stakeholders. They also keep stakeholders informed of the project’s overall progress.
• Encourage collaboration and identify areas for improvement: Visualizing the application system structure makes it easier for your team members to discuss the design, find patterns that work well, look for weak spots, and find areas to improve in a collaborative effort.

What a well-crafted software architecture diagram should include

The purpose of the software architecture diagram is to give team members and stakeholders context. A well-crafted diagram should:

• Show system interactions: Use simple shapes and lines to indicate process flows and the ways different elements interact with each other. Highlighting these relationships makes it easier to assess how changes can impact the entire system.
• Include useful annotations: Add helpful explanations to critical pieces of your diagram giving teammates and stakeholders important context and information. It should provide more nuanced details not easily conveyed in the diagram. 
• Be visible and accessible: Your diagrams aren’t useful if nobody sees them. Attach your diagram to Confluence and wiki pages, so they are accessible across your organization. Even share important diagrams across your chat platforms and reference them during standup meetings.

5 different types of architecture diagrams

Here are some of the different types of architectural diagrams, why they are useful, and how to build them.

Application architecture diagram

Application architecture diagrams work well for both software engineering and cloud-native applications. As a high-level diagram that shows the software’s basic structure, this type includes software components, their relationships, and their properties. It can also convey relationships with external components such as users, databases, and services. This type of diagram uses simple shapes and lines to represent various components. The basic design makes it easier for you to describe the application’s structure to management and other stakeholders.

Application architecture diagrams help you assess the potential impact that upgrading, replacing, or merging existing applications may have on the system. This also makes them especially useful for code maintenance, enabling developers to easily review code and find and patch bugs. 

Tips to create an application architecture diagram

• Use simple shapes and lines to represent components, relationships, layers, etc.
• Group application layers into logical categories such as business layer, data layer, service layer, etc.
• Indicate the architecture’s purpose and the intended outcomes.
• Identify the application’s dependencies and interactions.
• Add text annotations to incorporate details about the structure, groupings, security concerns, types of applications included, application organization, and so on.