[thelist] process/architecture diagramming

[rudy limeback]

> [visio] has pretty good support for DB logical models too
> (although Rudy's an Erwin fan, which is good enough for me)

leider nicht

jason, i have only one suggestion for process/architecture diagramming

it's really really important to know your audience and determine what
they're capable of understanding

somebody mentioned jcl (job control language) the other day, which gave me
a hot flash (woowoo) -- when i was, um, younger, in order to get a job into
production, you had to draw a diagram of it, that is, you had to give a
visual picture of the jcl, the job libraries and proc libraries and sys
libraries and sysin files and generation data sets and so on...  done
right, at best your diagrams were only marginally comprehensive...
naturally, the aces in operations didn't bother looking at your diagrams,
they just read the jcl, and the suits sure couldn't understand your
diagrams, but if they did stop to look at them (your boss, for one, pretty
much had to), they smiled and said things like "oh, very nice, but you
aren't using the correct off-page connector symbol" and then your diagrams
went into a three-ring binder and were never looked at again

i still have a couple flowcharting templates here somewhere

anyhow, coming back to process diagramming, i recently used BPwin (the
companion product to ERwin) to support 6 analysts in a big business
analysis project... BPwin is pretty good, but you wouldn't want to use it
unless you were already steeped (think three-day-old tea) in the process
modelling methodology... this would apply to *any* tool that supports a
process modelling methodology...  by the way, we got as far with BPwin as
identifying some 50 database tables, but by then the powerbuilder
programmers had gotten hold of the project, and it was doomed...

architecture diagramming is completely different from process diagramming

if you are designing the structure of a web site, stay away from
complexity --  you really *don't* need much more than paper and pencil to
capture your main concepts, and then you should keep whittling it down
until you end up with no more than one or two diagrams

at that point, microsoft paint will do just fine

if you are targetting suits, the fewer diagrams the better, although having
at least one or two is de rigueur  -- ever been to a sales presentation?
powerpoint slides? boxes and arrows? how come every sales presentation uses
boxes and arrows? there's gotta be a reason, and it's because there's suits
in the audience...

my own feeling is that the architecture of a site is best shown by a
working mockup -- by "working" i mean real pages, real links, real nav
bars, etc... sure, it means a bit of work up front, but no more than fancy
diagrams...


anyhow, Visio might be worth a shot, i haven't used it since the eighties
(so my experience doesn't count) but i've heard people say good things
about it on a couple lists


as for ERwin, which is a data modelling tool (you can leave off reading
right here, jason), i use it but i am decidedly and vehemently *not* a fan,
martin

ERwin is an expensive, overblown, pretentious, horribly horribly complex
piece of shit, but it's *my* piece of shit -- i'd rather use ERwin than try
to do what it does by hand

just setting the record straight  ;o)


<tip type=OTcanadiana>
learn all about "about" and "eh"
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(warning: uses "au" sound files, my ie4 just showed code in the browser
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</tip>


rudy.limeback
r937.com
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