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Diagram Driven Communication

2 Apr, 2014

There's an interesting article from 2010 from Gregor Hohpe (of Enterprise Integration Patterns book fame) about Diagram Driven Design, an idea I think is quite helpful.

Diagrams are great ways of communicating complex ideas, and if your idea isn't refined to the stage when you can draw a diagram to communicate it, you probably need to think harder about the idea itself.

The article is here:

http://www.eaipatterns.com/ramblings/75_ddd.html

The agile manifesto describes how its signatories value "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". For me, diagrams are a way of facilitating interactions.

A related concept is the use of metaphors so that the customer can understand the concepts being discussed. See also these articles:

Sometimes it is easier to draft out some written documentation to clarify thoughts before drawing a diagram. That's fine too.

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