‘No shit’ or ‘Oh, shit!’: responses to observations on the use of UML in professional practice

This paper follows a paper, “UML in Practice” presented at ICSE 2013. It summarizes and reflects on the dis- cussion and additional investigation that arose from “UML in Practice.” The paper provides a condensed recap of “UML in Practice” findings, explains what data were collected from which sources to inform this paper, and describes how the data were analyzed. It reports on the discussion that has arisen, summarizing responses from industry practitioners, academics teaching software engineering, and the UML com- munity, and considers how those responses reflect on the original observations. The responses to “UML in Practice” divide (crudely) between two perspectives: (1) the observa- tions made are familiar and unsurprizing, and match personal experience (“No shit”); or (2) the observations threaten long- held beliefs about UML use, and in particular about the sta- tus of UML as the de facto standard of software engineering, implying a need to change personal practice (“Oh, shit!”)