UML Fever spreads

…and I don’t mean fever in a positive manner. UML has been around for over a decade now and has been broadly adopted by many people and organisations. I say adopted, maybe I mean ‘caught’.

In 2004 Ian Bell of the Boeing Company wrote an excellent article on some of the perils and pitfalls of ‘adopting’ UML without correctly implementing it. What makes it one of my all time favorite articles is the amusing, almost satirical, manner in which he presents typical problems in the form of a class of fevers (classified under several meta-fevers) that represent issues – not with UML but – with the way organisations implement UML poorly.

Another reason I like this article is that  seven years later it appears that not a lot has changed in the world of UML.  If anything the fevers have managed to adapt and find new hosts such as Agile and Enterprise Architecture.

Anyway – you can download and read this excellent article in PDF format at http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=984495