As a Dev Ops Coordinator I would like a tool which allows central creation of diagrams which "live update" in several places.
Part of the CI/CD Development Series
In order to achieve your goal, you need to a) have one and then b) find the best way to clarify that goal into some tangible medium. Paper and doodling is a great start but eventually those doodles need to be put into a some clear communication format which is accessible to yourself, your team and anyone else who needs to see what you are striving for.
There are several diagrams that go into communicating the plans and specifics of software projects. UML has several diagram listings including Deployment Diagrams, such as the one below, Component Diagrams, Activity Diagrams and more.
This inevitably leads to the multiple problems of
- How to develop the diagrams
- How to publish the diagrams in locations which can be referenced by the target audience
- How to update the diagrams which have been distributed or published.
This last item is probably the most difficult since it is easy to put off publishing the new diagrams until it is "finished" or accidentally overlooking locations where it has been published or distributed.
Many of the online documentation tools allow exporting of diagrams in various formats including a "live embed" such as the one below. This was created with Lucid Chart ( https://lucidchart.com ). I created a draft of this Deployment Chart and then chose the "embed" option which created HTML for a div and an iframe. After copying and pasting that code into this entry, the chart updates automatically each time that the page loads. Using this approach, I was able to also include this into Confluence in a section called Key Diagrams. We'll discuss the specifics of the diagram in a later post but the immediate point is the live updating of diagram in the key locations to allow accurate and timely information to be communicated.
In order to achieve your goal, you need to a) have one and then b) find the best way to clarify that goal into some tangible medium. Paper and doodling is a great start but eventually those doodles need to be put into a some clear communication format which is accessible to yourself, your team and anyone else who needs to see what you are striving for.
There are several diagrams that go into communicating the plans and specifics of software projects. UML has several diagram listings including Deployment Diagrams, such as the one below, Component Diagrams, Activity Diagrams and more.
This inevitably leads to the multiple problems of
- How to develop the diagrams
- How to publish the diagrams in locations which can be referenced by the target audience
- How to update the diagrams which have been distributed or published.
This last item is probably the most difficult since it is easy to put off publishing the new diagrams until it is "finished" or accidentally overlooking locations where it has been published or distributed.
Many of the online documentation tools allow exporting of diagrams in various formats including a "live embed" such as the one below. This was created with Lucid Chart ( https://lucidchart.com ). I created a draft of this Deployment Chart and then chose the "embed" option which created HTML for a div and an iframe. After copying and pasting that code into this entry, the chart updates automatically each time that the page loads. Using this approach, I was able to also include this into Confluence in a section called Key Diagrams. We'll discuss the specifics of the diagram in a later post but the immediate point is the live updating of diagram in the key locations to allow accurate and timely information to be communicated.
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