A survey into the rigor of UML use and its perceived impact on quality and productivity

Abstract

The UML (Unified Modeling Language) has become the de facto standard for software modeling in the software industry. Despite its wide acceptance, little is known about how UML is used in practice, let alone the challenges and difficulties faced by engineers who work with this modeling notation. In this paper, we provide empirical findings from a survey on the use of UML amongst 80 professional software engineers. We explore software engineers' opinions on common styles of using UML and how they perceive the impact of using UML on productivity and quality in software development. One of the results reveals that the impact of using the UML on productivity is perceived mostly in the design, analysis, and implementation phases.