Use cases

Concrete patterns from real usage, rather than a feature list.

#Common patterns

Team	What they document	Usually with
Platform engineering	Service topology and request paths	draw.io for topology, Mermaid for sequences
Backend teams	Database schemas and API flows	Mermaid ER and sequence diagrams
Architecture	Context and container diagrams	draw.io, often with an icon set
Operations	Runbooks and escalation paths	Mermaid flowcharts
Business analysis	Approval and onboarding processes	BPMN, with DMN for the decision points
Product and design	User journeys and rough wireframes	Excalidraw

#The pattern worth copying

The teams who get the most out of this keep the diagram on the page it describes, rather than in a diagrams space of its own. A topology diagram on the service page gets updated when the service changes. The same diagram in a gallery does not.

Examples

Working versions of these.

Diagram types

Pick the notation.

Integrations

Getting diagrams into Jira and published sites.

Keep the diagram next to the thing it explains.