An Everyday Example of Architecture Documentation: Subway Maps
• White Paper
This white paper explores the idea that subway maps provide a good, common example of architecture documentation and that they might be instructive about good software architecture documentation.
Publisher
Software Engineering Institute
Topic or Tag
Abstract
This white paper stems from an observation by the SEI's Paul Clements that
. . . subway maps are very good everyday examples of architecture documentation. A subway system architecture isn't a software architecture, for sure, but it's certainly an architecture. I started wondering what parts of our Views and Beyond approach to documentation I could recognize in a subway map and the associated pieces of information the public can find in a subway station.