How do you architect an application?

Question

Software design

You receive a new project with technical specifications (possibly + design).
If the project is not a template, competent preliminary planning is needed.
How do you design the application architecture (or who does it in your company)?
Do you use user-story or mind-map? If not, what are you using?
If so, how justified is it?
How much time is allocated for such tasks and how many people are involved in this?
How and who paints the stages? Do you use template development techniques?
The question is general, concerning any stages of preliminary planning. Share your experience.

Answer 1

Here's my answer on a related topic: How do I write a project design plan?
And besides, I want to note that starting a project with design (if you mean user interface design) is in most cases a very bad practice. The project needs to start with a concept, and then move on to the information model, then to data structures (both in the database and in memory), and only then it’s only clear what will be done on the screen. An exception may be games, e-books, animated, interactive and similar works that are more a work of visual art than a software product. From design tools, look at different implementations of UML and RUP (Rational Unified Process), such as Rational Rose. Here, we looked, and liked it - take it, but it became scary - it means you don't need it. This is for large and very large projects. What exactly is needed so it is to be able to draw ER diagrams on a piece of paper with a pencil, the architecture of the software system modules and the iron infrastructure for deployment. Most of the questions you ask can only be answered in relation to a specific project. Sometimes automated design tools are needed, sometimes they are not needed and everything can be done in the mind and save time. It very much depends on the task and experience. But what is certain is that one should not breed unnecessary bureaucracy,

Answer 2

herak-herak - and in production

Answer 3

It's very simple:
1) Draw a design to represent what data is needed in the system and how the user will interact with it. This is enough to fully describe the data structures and 90% of the functionality of the system.
2) Describe the functionality that is not visible from the interface. Now you have fully prepared system requirements and interface.
3) Draw the architecture of the system, the scheme of interaction between modules, draw data schemes, databases, etc. For those who love bureaucracy - UML (and it doesn't matter what size your system is), or you can invent your own legend and draw your own schemes adapted to a specific system (easier and faster, as for me).
4) Do.
Asking about the number of man-hours in isolation from tasks is stupid.