Inspired by the podcast episode on tools for architects created by Patoarchitekci (in Polish), I decided to share some tools and work techniques that I use in my daily work. These tools help visualize needs, achieve consensus, and decide what to focus on. By using them, we aim to bypass excess unnecessary information and consider only what is essential.
The tools I will describe focus on various aspects of work—defining goals, visualizing the business environment, describing processes in our organizations, and more. In our work, we encounter different situations, so it’s worthwhile to have a wide range of techniques to utilize when the need arises.
You might be surprised, but I won’t start with Event Storming 😉, although it is indeed included in my list. The list of techniques I will discuss is as follows:
- Impact Mapping
- Business Model Canvas
- Event Storming
- Matrices
- Value-Stream Mapping
- Example Mapping
- Wardley Map
- Stock and Flow Diagram
Before you dive into the individual techniques and tools, check out why using such tools is worth your attention.
Visualization
Each of the methods you will read about below is based on visualization. This is the key to success. Visualization is important to achieve valuable solutions in a finite amount of time. Without it, it’s hard to notice what is important to us. We are visual beings, and without using this sense, achieving results takes much longer.
This is particularly important when working in a group. Having a certain solution in mind, it often turns out that everyone imagines it slightly differently. Only by visualizing it together can we notice our differences. We can make a clear decision about which direction to go. Without this, in later stages, gaps and differences in understanding emerge that could have been addressed earlier.
I have described this topic more broadly in a post about the advantages of Event Storming.
