The biggest compliment I received regarding my solution design diagrams was something along those lines:
“I do not understand the technical aspects represented on your diagram, but the overall idea looks very clear to me."
Sometimes I see technical diagrams by very smart/experienced professionals that are extremely hard to follow. I know that those people know and understand what they are talking about, but those designs are not representing that.
There might be multiple reasons:
- authors assume that everyone has the same intuition/experience as they do, so there is no point in representing some (very important) concepts on those diagrams,
- authors do not want to “waste” their time on something that they did not find valuable (proper diagrams),
- authors are not willing to learn drawing tools and best practices of diagram design (they are experts, not artists).
In my personal opinion, a well-designed solution diagram is extremely valuable and saves tons of hours of discussions and waving hands in the air.
… and I look at it as a piece of art :)
Update: A few people asked me about the design tools I use.
Personally, I use Draw.io to create most of my diagrams.
When I need to create a complex sequence diagram, I use the PlantUML - generated diagrams are not visually compelling, but they are easy to manage and update (diagram is defined as a code).
PlantUML is a bit tricky to use, I recommend the Real World PlantUML site as a quick start.
