Structural View design intermediate

Layered Architecture Diagram

The solution as horizontal capability tiers with cross-cutting concerns as vertical bars — the picture executives expect and the one most often drawn without meaning.

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flowchart TB
  subgraph l1["Experience"]
    direction LR
    e1["Web"] --- e2["Mobile"] --- e3["Partner Portal"]
  end
  subgraph l2["Channel & API"]
    direction LR
    c1["API Gateway"] --- c2["BFF"] --- c3["Event Ingress"]
  end
  subgraph l3["Business Services"]
    direction LR
    b1["Ordering"] --- b2["Pricing"] --- b3["Fulfilment"] --- b4["Billing"]
  end
  subgraph l4["Integration"]
    direction LR
    i1["Message Broker"] --- i2["Adapters"] --- i3["File Transfer"]
  end
  subgraph l5["Data"]
    direction LR
    d1["Operational Stores"] --- d2["Analytical Platform"] --- d3["Cache"]
  end
  subgraph l6["Infrastructure"]
    direction LR
    f1["Compute"] --- f2["Network"] --- f3["Storage"]
  end
  l1 --> l2 --> l3 --> l4 --> l5 --> l6

  sec["Security<br/>&<br/>Identity"]
  ops["Observability<br/>&<br/>Operations"]

What it is

The stack view: capability tiers top to bottom, with security and operations as vertical bars because they are not a layer — they cut through every one. It is the most frequently produced and least frequently useful architecture diagram, because it is easy to draw and hard to draw meaningfully.

It earns its place when the layering is a real constraint: layer three may not call layer five directly, the integration layer is the only path to legacy, and so on. Without such a rule it is a poster.

When you produce it

Early, for a senior audience, and in an RFP or vendor pack where a common frame is needed to compare proposals. Pair it with the container diagram, which carries the detail this one deliberately omits.

Who reads it

Executives and steering groups, who find it legible. Vendors responding to a tender. New joiners getting oriented before they see anything real.

What good looks like

The layering rule is written down next to the diagram, and is enforceable.
Cross-cutting concerns are vertical, not squeezed in as another band.
Each cell names something that will actually exist, not a category.
It is explicitly labelled as a logical view, so nobody mistakes it for deployment.

Common mistakes

Boxes that name nothing. "Business Logic Layer" is a tautology.
No rule. If any layer may call any other, the layers are decoration.
Presenting it as the architecture. It is one view, and the least falsifiable one.