UML + some UI

[ibi sum]

> The people on this list who claim it's useless or that they don't use it or
> that it attracts the wrong kind of people or that it will bring the
> Antichrist in our mids have never done a proper course of designing with
> UML, starting with stakeholder interviews and ending with a full design,
> from which tools can generate skeleton code for you.

At my primary job (Train Systems), I have CMMI to contend with, daily
and quite stringently.   At my secondary job (Film Co.), its all
Agile.  On my hack projects, Scrum and XP (not the OS, the development
principle) .. UML comes in use, but not nearly as frequently as
warrants holding it up as 'the' development methodology, nor is it
really important to use UML for each and every problem in a project.
Some projects warrant the effort it takes to create huge ERD's, others
.. well, they'd just get in the way of getting real work done.

So, the point is: choose the methodology that is appropriate for your
case.  Not all software development projects will benefit from a huge
UML ramp-up period - many others would never get done were it not a
requirement of the managers involved that UML be used to explain it
all .. to the managers.

Never, ever, let a methodology be the reason you're doing the project.
 Too many times I've seen so-called professional developers burn up
their budgets on things like UML and Case design, while in the
meantime nothing, not a single line of code, was written.  Eschew
those that say that such methodologies are the 'only solution to
professional software development' - it has been my experience,
especially lately, that you can get a lot more done by ignoring the
complicated methodologies, when appropriate, and focus on what your
users want, ultimately, anyway: working code, in front of them, being
used to get real work done.  UML is just a tool... it is, ultimately,
pretty useless to the end user if all they have is a big fat ERD to
guide them along ..

j.