Results
Less time spent updating diagrams
Stakeholders understand system design
Faster architecture decision making
Introduction
Dassault Falcon Jet is the U.S. subsidiary of Dassault Aviation, based in Teterboro, New Jersey. They handle sales, service, and support for the Falcon family of business jets across the Americas.
Problem
Like many aerospace companies, DFJ often deals with both technical and organizational complexity. Integrating the new and the old, of systems and people.
DFJ faced three key challenges related to architecture:
1. Bridging old and new technologies
Aerospace still runs systems built in the 1960s and 70s, from Fortran programs to punch card-based workflows. These coexist alongside advanced tools like evolutionary algorithms and real-time fluid dynamics simulations. Integrating across this spectrum is challenging.
2. Socio-technical alignment
The toughest challenges weren't purely technical, but social. Tenured engineers work alongside younger ones with different levels of experience and working styles. The human aspect made alignment even more difficult.
3. Communicating architecture effectively
Legacy diagramming tools like Visio made it difficult to scale architecture work. Diagrams were slow to create, lacked consistency, and often failed to capture the reasoning behind design decisions. This limited buy-in from stakeholders and slowed down collaboration.
"Since IcePanel is so intuitive to use, people can investigate and learn for themselves. Time is saved with each meeting that no longer needs to happen, the prep-work that doesn't have to done, and each questions you no longer have to answer."
How IcePanel helped
IcePanel gave Matthew and his team the structure and clarity they needed to communicate across aerospace's unique challenges:
1. Replacing inadequate tools
IcePanel provided a model-driven, C4-based approach, making diagram creation and maintenance easier compared to struggling with Visio templates. It enabled teams to quickly generate clean, interactive visuals instead of dragging disconnected boxes and arrows.
2. Surfacing misalignments
Matthew could use IcePanel to guide stakeholders through different levels of abstraction, from high-level system landscapes to detailed L3 designs. This facilitated spotting inefficiencies and proposing fixes, such as consolidating message flows into simpler architectures.
3. Building stakeholder buy-in
The interactive and structured nature of IcePanel diagrams engaged non-technical stakeholders and fostered investment in solutions. It created an "IKEA effect" where people value outcomes more because they helped shape them.
4. Accelerating onboarding and presentations
IcePanel significantly reduced preparation time for presentations and onboarding. Instead of static slide decks, Matthew could export diagrams or navigate live models, helping new developers and managers in building intuitive understanding faster.
5. Enabling a model-based future
Matthew views IcePanel as a foundation for model-based enterprises. "Having a model that is both human-readable and machine-readable is going to be the key. Organizations that aren't doing this won't be able to compete."
Full interview
Read our full ice-breaker interview with Matthew here.
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