During the month, we conducted eight in-depth interviews with software architects and engineers to better understand their pain points and challenges in software architecture diagramming. That makes up a total of 44 interviews done so far.
The key insights from these interviews include:
Continue to understand that software architecture diagrams can be produced by individuals with various titles in an organisation, from CXO to Software Engineer, depending on the size and type of the organisation.
Software engineering teams do not spend more time on architectural planning, which costs them money and time in the long run.
There is a strong need for a platform that can easily handle large and complex diagrams.
Integration with other tools commonly used by software teams, such as project management and version control tools, is seen as a desirable feature.
Many interviewees expressed a desire for a platform that allows for multiple views of the same architecture, such as high-level and low-level views.
The ability to add annotations and documentation directly on the diagrams was also seen as a requirement.
Mostly the engineers were interested in a platform that helps to share software architecture diagrams to discuss and share knowledge.
Still, the research is conducted without a target market segment and will continue to seek opportunities for market segmentation.
During the holiday period starting from 24th December to 2nd January, Shanika is planing to build a simple prototype to test the idea of sharing software architecture diagrams as a community.
Our December interviewees and their organisations are reflected in the statistics below.