[WayBack]Whilst some people employ lightweight modelling techniques such as C4, most diagrams in use today, are what I call, somewhat derogatorily, masala diagrams. No hard feelings, I call my own diagrams like this. Why masala? Because they are informal; they cover multiple dimensions at once, they may be both structural and behavioural, logical and physical. They are often a mishmash of the 4+1 architectural model’s views.
I must admit that I never liked UML for describing systems architecture. I can't name any special reason for this. However, I really like the term masala diagrams for diagrams illustrated in the linked article. From my point of view these kinds of diagrams feed the needs of the separate roles in a business context. And somehow everybody looking at these kind of diagrams gets a grasp of how the system is architected and what its intension is.
Even though I still see why UML has been appealing in the first place to describe business models.