Why hand drawing how your current IT system works is not a good idea

Do you know how your IT systems fit together? Do you know what might be affected if something gets removed or suddenly stops working? Can you tell whether a server or application should be included in your migration plan or decommissioned altogether?

If the answer is that you or someone else draws a diagram using a whiteboard, powerpoint, visio or a modelling tool, then your organisation is likely to be making critical decisions using out of date or plain misinformation.

Don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with drawing conceptual, artistic impression future state diagrams, showing how things ought to work. However, hand-drawing current state diagrams to better understand how things are in fact working right now will bring a whole set of problems with it.

Let me explain why.

Drawing a diagram by hand will be wrong as soon as it's finished because your current state is always shifting, and keeping up with these changes with manual adjustments is impossible. Even if you are great at drawing diagrams, remembering everything accurately will be a challenge as will conveying relevance and meaning to multiple stakeholders. And don't get me started on the time these diagrams take to draw and get the layouts just right, imagine what you could do with all that saved time!

The solution is simple; let current state diagrams draw themselves using your existing current state data.

This is why we developed @HubScope, which draws diagrams automatically so you don't have to. For more information visit hubscope.com