TALK 1 ABSTRACT

The C4 model for visualising software architecture

It's very likely that most software architecture diagrams you've seen are a confused mess of boxes and arrows. 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 centred around incoherent whiteboard diagrams or shallow "Marketecture" diagrams created with Visio. Moving fast and being agile requires good communication, yet software development teams struggle with this fundamental skill. A good set of software architecture diagrams are priceless for aligning a team around a shared vision, and for getting new-joiners productive fast.

Simon's first talk of the evening explored the visual communication of software architecture, and was based upon his years of experience working with software development teams large and small across the globe. We looked 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. The content was based upon the "C4 model", which Simon 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 a way to create maps of your code, at various levels of detail, allowing you to tell different stories to different audiences.

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Drinks and food courtesy of our partners, Integral Ad Science, Stack and Co, FINEOS and tcube Dublin.

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TALK 2 ABSTRACT

Reverse-engineering architecture diagrams from your Java app

You've adopted the C4 model and have a collection of zoomable system context and container diagrams. These are useful for having high-level conversations, but they don't cover the internal implementation details of your Java app. You consider creating a C4 component diagram.

Unfortunately the size and complexity of your Java codebase makes manually drawing this out of the question, and reverse-engineering the codebase with a generic tool produces a cluttered diagram that literally shows everything. How do you create useful component level diagrams that remain up to date with minimal effort? Is this even possible?

We joined Simon for a discussion of how to tackle this problem, where he covered the theory and tactics behind how to reverse-engineer meaningful component diagrams, before presenting a live demo of how to use the open source Structurizr DSL to put the techniques into action.

Meet Simon

Senior Principal Software Engineer at Backbase

Simon Brown is an independent consultant specialising in software architecture. He is the author of “Software Architecture for Developers” (a developer-friendly guide to software architecture, technical leadership and the balance with agility), the creator of the C4 model for visualising software architecture, and the creator of the open source Structurizr tooling.

Simon is a regular speaker at international software development conferences, and travels the world to help organisations visualise their software architecture.

Website: https://simonbrown.je

X / Twitter: https://x.com/simonbrown

About the Dublin Java User Group Since 2006, the Dublin Java User Group, aka DubJUG, has been working with the global Java community to amplify technical knowledge for the benefit of Irish based developers and businesses.