System Composer

Overview

System Composer supports the creation of software specifications which are well understood by developers and business people alike.

The System Map is the central tool to achieve this. Such a map consists of actors, features, functions and integrations. The visualization aids in building a shared vision and clear understanding of the software solution.

Let’s use a System Map to describe System Composer itself:

Isn’t that a bit ‘trivial’? Yes, to achieve this ‘trivial’ overview the system must be understood and decomposed well.

Actors – who are the users of the system?

Features – which features exist from a user’s perspective?

Functions – how is the system decomposed?

Integrations – which other systems are integrated or affected?

With System Composer this overview can be easily created in a neat WYSIWYG editor. It would be just as fine if this visualization would be created in Word or other tools, but System Composer goes further.

There is a feature that supports creating hierarchical specifications when a function represents an new sub-spec, thus a deep system decomposition can be achieved.

Additionally System Composer supports great integrations with wireframing tools, progress tracking and even source code tracing. It can be easily embedded into the “real” specification documents, as an image or directly as a Microsoft Word Document. Freemind is also tightly integrated, since this tool is also well suited for decomposing and visualizing systems.

Further Reading

• Draft Ideas
• Decompose Systems
• Lo-Fi Prototyping
• Progress Tracking