System Artifacts — Business-Focused View

When presenting High-Level System Design (HLD) and Low-Level Design (LLD) to non-technical management (product owners, stakeholders, execs), your goal is to communicate key decisions, architecture, scalability, and business impact without overwhelming them with code or technical jargon.

Here are the most effective artifacts you should use — structured by level and with examples:

🎯 Objective

When presenting High-Level System Design (HLD) and Low-Level Design (LLD) to non-technical management (e.g., product owners, stakeholders, executives), your primary goal is to communicate:

📌 Key architectural decisions
📈 System scalability and reliability
🧱 Component responsibilities
💰 Business impact and trade-offs

— while avoiding unnecessary code or low-level technical jargon.

🧱 High-Level Design (HLD) Artifacts — Business-Focused View

✅ 1. System Architecture Diagram

Purpose: Visualize the complete system, its main components, and how they interact.
Audience: Everyone (non-tech & tech)
Tips: Use cloud icons (e.g., Azure, AWS), APIs, services, and arrows for data flow.

📌 Example: Browser → API Gateway → Auth Service → DB

✅ 2. Component Overview

Purpose: Describes high-level responsibilities of each service or module.
Format: Simple table or bullet list.

📌 Example:

Component	Responsibility
Auth Service	Handles login/registration
Email Service	Sends notification emails
Product Service	Manages product catalog

✅ 3. Data Flow Diagram (Level 0 / 1)

Purpose: Illustrates flow of data through the system.
Helps explain: Where data is input, processed, and output.

📌 Use Case: "How user information flows during sign-up"

✅ 4. Deployment Diagram

Purpose: Shows infrastructure layout: load balancers, containers, cloud services, regions.
Audience: Tech & Infra Management

📌 Example: Region-1: App Service, DB; Region-2: Replica, CDN

✅ 5. Trade-off Matrix

Purpose: Shows rationale behind architectural decisions.
Format: Table with options vs pros/cons

📌 Example: SQL vs NoSQL, Monolith vs Microservices

✅ 6. UML Component Diagram (Simplified)

Purpose: Visualize how large parts (services/modules) connect.
Audience: Semi-technical & technical stakeholders

📌 Example: AuthService ↔ UserDB ↔ TokenService

🧰 Low-Level Design (LLD) Artifacts — Developer-Focused with Management-Friendly View

✅ 1. Sequence Diagram (UML)

Purpose: Step-by-step visualization of key flows between components.
Audience: Semi-technical, QA, developers

📌 Use Case: Order placed → Validate stock → Process payment → Send confirmation

✅ 2. Class Diagram (UML)

Purpose: Shows object-oriented structure: classes, interfaces, relationships.
Audience: Developers/Architects

📌 Use Case: Model User, Admin : User, IUserRepository, EFUserRepository

✅ 3. Activity Diagram (UML)

Purpose: Visualize a business process or workflow with decisions/branches.
Audience: Business Analysts, QA

📌 Use Case: "User Onboarding" — Fill form → OTP → Verify → Welcome

✅ 4. State Diagram (UML)

Purpose: Models different states and transitions of an entity.
Audience: QA/Architects

📌 Use Case: Order: Created → Paid → Shipped → Delivered → Returned

✅ 5. ER Diagram (Entity-Relationship)

Purpose: Visualize database schema and relationships between entities.
Audience: Tech teams

📌 Example: User ↔ Orders ↔ OrderItems with foreign keys and constraints

✅ 6. API Contract Overview

Purpose: Explain what APIs exist and what they do — in plain language.
Audience: Product Owners, QA, Managers