Context view

A context view, or context diagram, shows an entire system as a single black box situated within its context. It depicts the boundary between the system and its environment, and the neighbors – other software, hardware such as sensors, humans, user roles, or even whole organizations – with which the system interacts across that boundary.

A context view can be drawn from either of the two perspectives that make up a system’s context: the business context, which names interactions in domain terms, or the technical context, which names the concrete protocols and channels those interactions travel over. Many teams draw both, since each answers a different question about the same set of neighbors.