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Asked: 2026-05-10T17:50:05+00:00

I work a lot with decision makers looking to use technology better in their

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I work a lot with decision makers looking to use technology better in their businesses. I have found that a picture is worth a thousand words and prototyping a system in a diagram of some sorts always lends a lot to a discussion. I have used Visio, UML (somewhat), Mind Maps, Flow Charts and Mocked Up WinForms to start the vision for these sponsors to ensure that everyone is on the same page. I always seem to be looking for that common process can be used to knit the business vision to the development process so that we all end up at the same end, ‘Something functional that solves a problem‘.

I am looking for suggestions or Cliff notes on how to approach the design process such that it works for applications that may only take a week to develop, but can also be used to encompass larger projects as well.

I know that this delves into the area of UML, but I have found that I have a hard time finding a guide to appropriately use the various diagram types, let alone help business users understand the diagrams and relate to them.

What do you use to capture a vision of a system/application to then present to the sponsors of a project? (all before you write a single line of code)…

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  1. Paper or whiteboard!

    For the lone deveoper, I’d recommend paper. At least at first, eventually you may want to formalize it with UML, but I don’t think its necessary.

    For a group of developers that work together (physically), I’d recommend a whiteboard. That way its visible for everyone and everyone can improve and contribute. Again, you may want to formalize at this point, but I still don’t think its neces

    When I first started doing OOP (or designing an algorithm), I’d do it all in my head while coding. But after doing some reasonable complex projects I definitely see the benefit in drawing out the interactions between different objects in a system.

    I do projects by myself, so I use lots of index cards for designing classes and paper for their interactions. The point is it needs to be easy to change. I’ve played with Dia, a diagram editor, for doing UML, but making changes is too difficult. I want to be able to be able to make quick changes, so I can figure out what works best.

    Its worth mentioning that TDD and doing ‘spike'[1] projects can help when designing a system, too.

    [1] From Extreme Programming Adventures in C#, page 8:

    ‘Spike’ is an Extreme Programming term meaning ‘experiement.’ We use the word because we think of a spike as a quick, almost brute-force experiment aimed at learning just one thing. Think of drving a big nail through a board.

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