Question

Are there any tools you would recommend for site architecture design and analysis? I’ve checked out several such as Poseidon UML, Adalon and FuseBuilder for ColdFusion, Mindmapper and a few others but have yet to find anything that seems to strike the right balance between allowing for quick high-level planning (as can be accomplished with mind mapping) to more detailed architecture and analysis. UML seems to be the ultimate for application design but I don’t consider tools such as Poseidon UML to be particularly adept when creating quick initial designs. Is there anything else out there that can be applied to any programming language, from CF to C#. Perhaps a combination of tools?

Answer 1

My fantasy modeling tool would

• Be ‘smart board’ enabled
  • Recording White Board
  • Act as a ‘pointing device’ for whatever software is behind it to allow drawing/highlighting
  • OCR
• Record Stories, as easily as 3×5 cards
• Allow Use Case walk-throughs with storyboard UI screens (just named pages at first)
• Support Quick & Dirty Class or E/R Diagramming
• Export to a neutral format for import to more formal Modeling tools.

Unfortunately, I can’t afford the hardware and I don’t think the software exists in a seamless fashion.

So

I use white boards, digital cameras, ‘sticky-notes’, recordings, lap-top for work with analysis or story recording.

I use Poseidon for lack of a better [affordable] tool

A wiki is useful for posting documents/content where users/customers can review and comment.

I’ve also used Visio when someone else is paying for it.

I can’t wait to see the other responses to this post, hoping to find some better answers!