Software Architect's Handbook

Communicating your architecture to others

A good software architecture is only useful if it can be communicated to others. If it cannot be communicated to others effectively, then those who need to build, use, and modify the architecture may not be able to do so, at least not in the way that the architect intended. During software architecture design, we identify all of the structures that make up the architecture and how they interact with each other. Documentation allows us to communicate those structures and interactions. The artifacts that are created when an architecture is documented focus on communicating the solution (architecture) to various audiences, which can be made up of both technical and non-technical people.

Software architects ...