Posts by Toby Couchman

TobyC

I've been using UML for a number of years now and have worked with various tools. I think that the mistake that many people make with them (and UML generally) when they first start is to believe that somehow they can make the uber-blueprint of 'the system' and then show their pointy-haired boss "look, this is the complete unambigious design for the system". Following the agile principles "model with a purpose" and "when stuck, iterate to another model" drastically improved my productivity in this area because I started to think about what I was trying to describe with the model rather than to try and describe everything at every level of abstraction (the point where many people get bogged down and give up).

This is all fine and dandy until you start to use tools which are trying to be clever. When all I want to do is make a quick model and save it I don't want dozens of pop-ups/warnings about this n that and be forced to put classes into packages etc, this just impedes me and my goal to capture an idea and communicate it quickly.

Round-trip engineering? Enough's already been said about that - I'd settle for decent reverse engineering with good automatic layout of classes/components etc - that way i'd be able to quickly generate "The UML" that's been promised as a project deliverable to someone who won't even understand it (don't even get me started on that one)