The 4+1 View Model

The 4 + 1 model proposes an interesting vision on how to design the architecture of a system. It is not the first time that I hear the analogy (although with a different context) of an object that is visualized with different perspectives (and senses) causing a completely different understanding, but which together give a better panorama of reality.

During my career I participated in the development of multiple systems, from the simplest to the most complex, and in all of us we have always encountered the question of what should we do? and how are we going to do it? The first question is always complex because, well ... our client never knows what he wants, but after asking questions, prototypes, making mistakes again and again, we believe that we understand what he wants. Now comes the complicated part: How are we going to do it?

Ah, because the team may have understood what the customer needs, but each of us has a different perspective and, therefore, we try to attack the problem differently. The important thing here now is communication. I think that in the videos and in the article there is not much talk about this important point, because it is of no use to have a multidisciplinary team with high technical capacity and reasoning if they do not know how to communicate.

Once we sit at a round table and start to share what everyone understood and try to express our point of view we come to something similar to what the 4 + 1 model mentions, talk about the same system, but from their different visualizations

We have already applied this model during the race, although we probably did not know that we did it, making the diagrams from these different points of view will always allow us to have a better perspective and, therefore, make better decisions in the analysis and design of the architecture of a system.