Anti-Pattern Name: Death by (Technical) Presentations
General Form:
A presentation on a technical topic contains many, many slides of tightly packed text with overly complex diagrams that are difficult to read close up let alone from any distance away.
Symptoms and Consequences:

• You’re invited along to a presentation where the architecture will be “presented”.
• The presentation consists of 167 slides in mainly 12pt font with closely packed words on each page.
• The presenter often says things like “I’m sorry you can’t see this from the back” or ” I’m going to skip over this slide as it’s not really relevant”.

Refactored Solution:

• Read this book and visit Garr Reynolds blog for ideas and inspiration
• Architectures should be created as models in a legitimate modelling tool. It’s okay to cut and paste pictures into a presentation tool such as PowerPoint as long as they can easily be viewed and are meaningful.
• Make sure presentations are consistent in their use of layout, colour and fonts.
• Don’t attempt to put all the information in a presentation. Refactor to contain the key points only.
• Put the detailed information in handouts which are given out after the presentation.

See Pattern #4