What About UMLs ?

As a Business Analyst, I'm pretty sure that you had came across UMLs a lot in your career. UML stands for Unified Modelling Language which is a standardized modelling technique. So in today's edition we will dive little into what actually UMLs are. So what about UMLs?

What is Unified Modelling Language?

UML is a standardized modelling language used with it's own notations for specifying, documenting and visualizing software systems. UML is mostly used to understand a software design for everyone in a project team and stakeholders. Developed on the object orient concept, UML is created with an effective variety of graphical notations.

How did it originated?

I personally think that origin of UML is an exciting discussion. The history goes as this.

In 1990s the need had been their in the industry for a standard notation for visualizing and documenting software. This has been a must at the time to decide on various designs and the architecting of a software.

At the time there had been 3 main notations used,

1. Object Modeling Technique or OMT of James Rumbaugh
2. Booch Method by Gary Booch
3. Object Oriented Software Engineering OOSE method by Ivar Jacobson which created Use Cases.

In 1995 all three above founders unified together and created the Unified Modeling Language. The 3 founders of UML are often called as the "Three Amigos".

In 1997 with collaboration of some leading companies UML 1.0 was created. This included companies like Oracle, IBM, Rational, Microsoft, HP and many more. The current version of UML is UML 2.5.

How does it work?

In a software project team there are different roles. This includes Software Engineers, Technical Writers, Business Analysts, Project Manager and QA Engineers. Each person is having their own angle of looking at a software design. Therefore UML is uniquely developed in a way that each person of the team can understand the system regardless of their view point. UML is designed in a way that least one diagram would be enough for team to come to an understanding about the software.

There are 14 UML diagrams. These 14 are divided into 2 areas. Which are Structure Diagrams and Behavior Diagrams. There are 7 Structure diagrams and they help in understanding static structure. The remaining 7 are Behavior Diagrams and they depicts the dynamic functions of an object with series of changes over a period of time to the system.

Structure Diagrams

1. Class Diagram
2. Deployment Diagram
3. Object Diagram
4. Component Diagram
5. Package Diagram
6. Profile Diagram
7. Composite Structure Diagram

Behavior Diagrams

1. Use Case Diagram
2. Activity Diagram
3. Sequence Diagram
4. Communication Diagram
5. State Mechanic Diagram
6. Timing Diagram
7. Interactive Overview Diagram

How can we use UML for Business Analysis?

The Static diagrams are more in a technical view point. For a business analyst to describe the behavior of a Software as the name suggests the Behavior Diagrams are ideal. You can use the behavior diagrams to explain the design of the software in an understandable manner. So a requirement can be modelled well using these tools. Then you can include these diagrams in your SRS document to finalize it with the Business Stakeholders. Even for Business Stakeholders what they can readily understand are the Behavior diagrams, rather than static diagrams.

There are 7 Behavior Diagrams, so what can you use? lets check out few.

Use Case Diagram

The Use Case Diagram is widely used by BA's no matter the experience level. Therefore I wont go in-depth on how to draw a Use Case diagram. Holistically the Use Case diagram describes the functional requirements or how a software will function. It depicts the Users of the solution, the environment and interactions inside this environment.

Sequence Diagram

This diagram uses interaction between objects in a time period to depict software functions. This can be one system or multiple systems. You can draw this using tools such as Visio or Drew.io to smoothly depict the interaction between a user and multiple systems through proper modelling.

Activity Diagram

The UML Activity Diagram is another effective type of Behavior Diagram. This depicts the flow of a system or a process. There are some particular shapes used when drawing an Activity Diagram and help the team a lot to understand a system flow well.

Wrapping things up...

So the main intention of today's edition had been to give you a brief understanding about UML diagrams which some of us blindly use. These tools we use in our work are very effective and powerful, which are designed with a reason and a purpose in mind. Therefore as a BA, you should make your Arsenal stronger by using these key techniques which are at your disposal. So further study and use in your day today activities will do a great good on your way to becoming an allrounder BA, Or the Superman BA we always talk about in The Classy Business Analyst series.