Keeping microservices documentation up to date is a challenge every team knows too well. With competing priorities—building, deploying, and keeping up with the pace of innovation—documentation often falls by the wayside or gets done in sporadic bursts. Clear, current architecture diagrams are critical for productivity, yet creating and maintaining them often feels like an uphill battle—too time consuming and always a step behind your system’s reality.
To address these challenges, vFunction builds on its recently released architecture governance capabilities with new functionality that simplifies documenting, visualizing, and managing microservices throughout their lifecycle.
Real-time documentation for modern development
Seamless integration with existing tools and workflows is essential for effective application development and management. New functionalities in vFunction’s architectural observability platform enable you to integrate and export vFunction’s architectural insights into your current workflows for greater efficiency and alignment.
Sequence diagrams: From static images to dynamic architecture-as-code diagrams
One of the standout features of our latest release revolves around expanding our ability to generate sequence diagrams based on runtime production data. We now track multiple alternative paths, loops, and repeated calls in a single flow—simplifying and speeding the detection and resolution of hard-to-identify bugs. Behind the scenes, we use Mermaid, a JavaScript-based diagramming and charting tool that uses Markdown-inspired text definitions, to render and modify these complex diagrams. The latest release also provides the option for the user to export these diagrams as code, specifically as Mermaid script.
Exporting flows in Mermaid script retain all the architectural details needed for teams to embed, modify, and visualize diagrams directly within tools like Confluence or other documentation platforms. This support ensures teams can reflect live architecture effortlessly, maintaining dynamic, up-to-date documentation that evolves alongside their systems.
Support for the C4 model and workflows
The C4 model is a widely used framework that illustrates the complex structures and interactions between context, container, component, and code diagrams within software systems. Now teams can export and import C4 container diagrams with vFunction, enhancing how engineers conceptualize, communicate, and manage distributed architectures throughout their lifecycle.
Using “architecture as code,” vFunction aligns live application architecture with existing diagrams, acting as a real-time system of record. This ensures consistency, detects drift, and keeps architecture and workflows in sync as systems evolve. By moving beyond drift measurements within vFunction and enabling teams to compare real-time architectural flows against C4 reference diagrams, this capability ensures that teams can identify where drift has occurred and have the context to understand its impact and prioritize resolution.
Distributed application dashboard
The new dashboard for distributed applications provides a centralized and actionable overview of architectural complexity and technical debt across your distributed portfolio of apps, empowering teams to make informed, data-driven decisions to maintain system health.
The related technical debt report helps teams track changes in technical debt across distributed applications, providing valuable insights to prioritize remediation efforts and enhance architectural integrity. For example, Service X may have a higher technical debt of 8.3 due to circular dependencies and multi-hop flows, while Service Y scores 4.2, indicating fewer inefficiencies. Teams can focus remediation efforts on Service X, prioritizing areas where architectural debt has the most significant impact.
The accompanying technical debt score offers a clear, quantified metric based on all open tasks (TODOs), including inefficiencies such as circular dependencies, multi-hop flows, loops, and repeated service calls. Developers use this score to focus on resolving issues like multi-hop flows. For example resolving redundant calls in a service can bring the debt down from 7.5 to 4.5. This score delivers actionable clarity, enabling teams to understand newly added debt and streamline the prioritization of technical debt reduction.
Additionally, CI/CD integration for debt management takes this functionality a step further. Triggered learning scripts allow teams to incorporate technical debt insights directly into their CI/CD pipelines. By comparing the latest system measurements with baseline data, teams can approve or deny pull requests based on technical debt changes, ensuring alignment with architectural goals and mitigating risks before they escalate.
Sync architectural tasks with Jira
vFunction brings architecture observability and workflow management closer together by syncing TODO tasks directly with Jira. Engineering leaders can integrate architectural updates into sprints and bake related tasks into existing workflows.
Why it matters: Efficiency, alignment, and agility
With these new capabilities, vFunction empowers teams to reclaim valuable engineering time, improve productivity, and maintain alignment. By bridging the gap between architecture and workflow, this release makes it easier than ever to document, update, and share architectural insights. Teams can focus on building resilient, scalable systems without the overhead of disconnected tools and outdated diagrams.
In the fast-paced world of microservices, maintaining clear, actionable architecture diagrams is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. vFunction equips your team to stay agile, aligned, and ahead of complexity.
Ready to transform your management of microservices?
Explore how vFunction can help your team tackle microservices complexity. Contact us today to learn more or start a free trial.
