A Brief History: From Simon Brown’s development (2006-2011) to current industry adoption
The C4 Model was created by Simon Brown, an independent software architecture consultant, author, speaker, and founder of the Structurizr tooling. Its origins trace back to the mid-2000s, when Simon was working as a developer and architect while also running internal workshops and consulting on software architecture visualization.
- Roots and early development (2006–2009): Simon began formulating the core ideas around 2006 while frustrated with existing approaches to diagramming software architecture. Influenced by UML and Philippe Kruchten’s 4+1 architectural view model, he sought a simpler, more pragmatic way to help teams describe systems — especially in agile environments where heavy documentation and rigid notations were often avoided or poorly adopted. Through hands-on workshops and real-world consulting, he refined a lightweight set of abstractions and a hierarchical structure for diagrams.
- Key milestones and naming (2010–2011): In early 2010, Simon explicitly named the diagram types — Context, Containers, Components, and Classes (later refined to Code). By early 2011, the term “C4” was first used to describe this four-level hierarchy. He presented early versions in talks and workshops, including sessions using camera lens analogies (wide-angle for context, zoom for containers/components, macro for code). A notable early public exposure came around 2010–2011 at events like QCon London, where he shared the approach to “designing software, drawing pictures.”
- Public launch and growth (2011 onward): Simon formalized the model under a Creative Commons license and launched the official website (c4model.com), making it freely available. He complemented this with his book series “Software Architecture for Developers” (starting around 2012–2013), which explained the model in a developer-friendly way alongside topics like technical leadership and agile balance. Conference talks (e.g., GOTO, Agile on the Beach, SATURN — where he won an IEEE Software award in 2013), YouTube videos, blog posts, and workshops spread the ideas globally. Simon has personally taught the C4 model to over 10,000 people across ~40 countries.
- Tooling and community evolution: Around the same time, Simon created Structurizr, a “diagrams as code” tool specifically designed to support the C4 model, enabling version-controllable, up-to-date architecture models integrated with source code and CI/CD pipelines. Community-driven tooling followed, including C4-PlantUML (for text-based PlantUML diagrams), integrations in tools like IcePanel, Visual Paradigm, Draw.io/Lucidchart plugins, and others like C4InterFlow.
- Wider industry adoption (2018–present): A major boost came in 2018 with increased articles, talks, and visibility that popularized the model further. By the 2020s, the C4 model had become a standard lightweight approach for visualizing architecture in agile, DevOps, and microservices contexts. It is now used by thousands of teams worldwide — from startups to large enterprises — for onboarding, architecture reviews, monolith decomposition, security analysis, and living documentation.
Recent highlights include ongoing workshops, conference keynotes (e.g., Devoxx, GOTO, DDD Europe into 2025–2026), a forthcoming O’Reilly book “The C4 Model: Visualizing Software Architecture” (early access available, full publication around 2026), and active community discussions (e.g., Reddit AMAs in 2025). The model continues to evolve through feedback, with emphasis on misconceptions, best practices, and integration with modern practices like architecture as code.
Today, the C4 model’s enduring appeal lies in its simplicity, flexibility, and focus on effective communication — proving that a pragmatic, hierarchical visualization approach can scale from small teams to complex enterprise landscapes while staying relevant in fast-moving software development.