Skip to main content
Log in

How effective is UML modeling ?

An empirical perspective on costs and benefits

  • Expert's Voice
  • Published:
Software & Systems Modeling Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Modeling has become a common practice in modern software engineering. Since the mid 1990s the Unified Modeling Language (UML) has become the de facto standard for modeling software systems. The UML is used in all phases of software development: ranging from the requirement phase to the maintenance phase. However, empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of modeling in software development is few and far apart. This paper aims to synthesize empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of modeling using UML in software development, with a special focus on the cost and benefits.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. This style of decision making in teams may well be very culturally dependent.

References

  1. Anda, B., Hansen, K., Gullesen, I., Thorsen, H.K.: Experiences from introducing uml-based development in a large safety-critical project. Empir. Softw. Eng. 11(4), 555–581 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Boehm, B.W.: Software Engineering Economics. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ (1981)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Boehm, B.W., Gray, T.E., Seewaldt, T.: Prototyping vs. specifying: a multi-project experiment. In: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Software engineering, pp. 473–484. IEEE Press, Piscataway (1984)

  4. Cherubini, M., Venolia, G., DeLine, R., Ko, A.J.: Let’s go to the whiteboard: how and why software developers use drawings. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in, computing systems, pp. 557–566 (2007)

  5. Dekel, U., Herbsleb, J.D.: Notation and representation in collaborative object-oriented design: an observational study. In: Proceedings of the 22nd annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on object-oriented programming systems and applications, pp. 261–280 (2007)

  6. Dobing, B., Parsons, J.: How UML is used. Commun. ACM 49(5), 109–113 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Dzidek, W.J., Arisholm, E., Briand, L.C.: A realistic empirical evaluation of the costs and benefits of UML in software maintenance. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 34(3), 407–432 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Forward, A., Lethbridge, T.: Perceptions of software modeling: a survey of software practitioners. Technical Report TR-2008-07, School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa, 800 King Edward Ave. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5 (2008)

  9. Genero, M., Fernández-Sáez, A.M., Nelson, H.J., Poels, G., Piattini, M.: Research review: a systematic literature review on the quality of UML models. J. Database Manag. 22(3), 46–70 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Grossman, M., Aronson, J.E., McCarthy, R.V.: Does UML make the grade? insights from the software development community. Inf. Softw. Technol. 47(6), 383–397 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Heijstek, W., Chaudron, M.R.V.: Empirical investigations of model size, complexity and effort in large scale, distributed model driven development processes—a case study. In: Proceedings of the 35th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA 2009) Patras, Greece (2009)

  12. Heijstek, W., Chaudron, M.R.V.: On the use of UML diagrams in industrial software architecture documents. Technical Report TR2011-02, Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, Leiden University, Niels Bohrweg 1, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands (2011)

  13. Herzberg, F.: One more time: how do you motivate employees? Harv. Bus. Rev. 46(1), 53–62 (1968)

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  14. Hutchinson, J., Whittle, J., Rouncefield, M., Kristoffersen, S.: Empirical assessment of mde in industry. In: Proceeding of the 33rd international conference on Software engineering, pp. 471–480. ACM Press, London (2011)

  15. Jones, C.: Software defect-removal efficiency. Computer 29(4), 94–95 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Jones, C.: Programming Productivity. McGraw-Hill, New York (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lange, C.F.J., Bois, B.D., Chaudron, M.R.V., Demeyer, S.: An experimental investigation of UML modeling conventions. In: Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, pp. 27–41 (2006)

  18. Lange, C.F.J., Chaudron, M.R.V.: Effects of defects in UML models: an experimental investigation. In: Osterweil L.J., Rombach H.D., Soffa M.L., (eds.) Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Software engineering. pp. 401–411. ACM Press, London (2006)

  19. Lange, C.F.J., Chaudron, Michel R.V., Muskens, J.: In practice: UML software architecture and design description. IEEE Softw. 23(2), 40–46 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Lange, C.F.J., Chaudron, M.R.V., Muskens, J., Somers, L.J., Dortmans, H.M.: An empirical investigation in quantifying inconsistency and incompleteness of UML designs. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Consistency Problems in UML-based Software Development (2003)

  21. McConnell, S.: Code Complete. Microsoft Press, Redmond (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Mellegård, N., Staron, M.: Characterizing model usage in embedded software engineering: a case study. In: Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Software Architecture: Companion Volume. pp. 245–252 (2010)

  23. Nugroho, A., Chaudron, M.R.V.: A survey into the rigor of UML use and its perceived impact on quality and productivity. In: ESEM ’08: Proceedings of the Second ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement, pp. 90–99. ACM Press, New York (2008)

  24. Nugroho, A., Flaton, B., Chaudron, M.R.V.: Empirical analysis of the relation between level of detail in UML models and defect density. In: Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, pp. 600–614. Springer, Berlin (2008)

  25. Nugroho, A., Lange, C.F.J.: On the relation between class-count and modeling effort. In: Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, vol. 5002/2008, pp. 93–104. Springer, Berlin (2007)

  26. Pareto, L., Eriksson, P., Ehnebom, S.: Architectural descriptions as boundary objects in system and design work. In: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Model driven, engineering, pp. 406–419 (2010)

  27. Premraj, R., Nauta, G., Tang, A., van Vliet, H.: The boomeranged software architect. In: Proceedings of the 2011 Ninth Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture, WICSA ’11, pp. 73–82. IEEE Computer Society, USA (2011)

  28. Shull, F., Basili, V., Boehm, B., Brown, A. W., Costa, P., Lindvall, M., Port, D., Rus, I., Tesoriero, R., Zelkowitz, M.: What we have learned about fighting defects. In: Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE Symposium on Software Metrics, pp. 249–258. IEEE Press, USA (2002)

  29. Staron, M.: Adopting model driven software development in industry—a case study at two companies. In: MoDELS, pp. 57–72 (2006)

  30. Stettina, C.J., Heijstek, W.: Necessary and neglected? an empirical study of internal documentation in agile software development teams. In: Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (SIGDOC 2011), Pisa, Italy, (October 2011)

  31. Thörn, C., Gustafsson, T.: Uptake of modeling practices in SME’s. In: Proceedings of the ICSE workshop on Modeling in Software Engineering (MiSE), ACM Press, New York (2008)

  32. Weigert, T., Weill, F.: Practical experiences in using model-driven engineering to develop trustworthy computing systems. In: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Sensor Networks, Ubiquitous, and Trustworthy, Computing (2006)

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Werner Heijstek.

Additional information

Communicated by Prof. Jon Whittle and Prof. Gregor Engels.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Chaudron, M.R.V., Heijstek, W. & Nugroho, A. How effective is UML modeling ?. Softw Syst Model 11, 571–580 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-012-0278-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-012-0278-4

Keywords

Navigation