Preface

Summary

The excellent idea of writing a lightweight book on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) wasn't ours, we admit. This idea originated from Milan's customers. Having taught more than a hundred courses and seminars on component approaches to software development and on UML over the past few years, he was repeatedly asked for “UML made easy” for people who specify, buy, or manage complex software systems, yet don't program them. This demand seems logical given the way UML is being used in projects and read of in the success stories – as well as the increasing specification workload in any knowledge industry (see Introduction). However, as we moved on into this book project, both of us became increasingly enthusiastic about the idea, as did Cambridge University Press (CUP). Luckily, a majority of our readers are quite familiar with CUP from their own (variety of) fields; so this book is likely to be seen as accessible in most senses of the word.

Any system specification can state requirements on functionality, usability, reliability, performance, and supportability, as well as legal and technical constraints where relevant. In UML projects, we start from a view of the business – its processes and activities – and move into functionality, incrementing all the remaining, nonfunctional, bullet lists as we go.