Thanks for putting that out there. It's super interesting to see what we consider architecture to be. Your approach appears operational, focused on how the completed system functions, i.e. getting a new team member up to speed on the codebase.
Typically I try to start with tiers (1, 2, n-tiers...?) that show how the system might be deployed. I then list list layers (user/facade/business/data), interfaces between these layers, and components within each layer. I do that for each tier.
After that maybe something about quality objectives and how they might be met, eg: availability (MTTF / (MTTF + MTTR) * 100), efficiency, flexibility, integrity, interop, usability and so on.
This leads to a physical delpoyment model, which shows layers deployed to tiers. And yes, I'm rather fond of Visio.
Then a bit about approach (dev/deployment and operational management) risk and stakeholder management, technical reviews (change control board maybe?), and project reviews.
To be fair I come from a predominantly critical systems world (telecoms OSS and BSS, healthcare, transport and some fintech. And in that world architecture is very far removed from actual code until eventually.
Typically I try to start with tiers (1, 2, n-tiers...?) that show how the system might be deployed. I then list list layers (user/facade/business/data), interfaces between these layers, and components within each layer. I do that for each tier.
After that maybe something about quality objectives and how they might be met, eg: availability (MTTF / (MTTF + MTTR) * 100), efficiency, flexibility, integrity, interop, usability and so on.
This leads to a physical delpoyment model, which shows layers deployed to tiers. And yes, I'm rather fond of Visio.
Then a bit about approach (dev/deployment and operational management) risk and stakeholder management, technical reviews (change control board maybe?), and project reviews.
To be fair I come from a predominantly critical systems world (telecoms OSS and BSS, healthcare, transport and some fintech. And in that world architecture is very far removed from actual code until eventually.