I recently received a comment on my blog about a comment I made on another blog. Ain't the Internet great?
Here's the response I sent:
Hello Nick,
Thanks for alerting me to the need for a contact link on my blog.
While I don't use UML, and neither do any of my coworkers, I have mixed feelings about the need for it. It seems perfectly reasonable that we should agree as an industry on a common set of symbols to represent OOP concepts, but UML has a typical "design by committee" feel.
In his comments to the "5 Books" post, Jonathan Allen brought up something that I was aware of, but never expressed precisely. He said that the object model is the most malleable part of the design. This is absolutely true. This is actually the conceptual basis for iterative, agile practices. The most critical aspect of the initial design, in my experience, is the interface between the UI and the object model.
While changing the UI is frustrating for users, it is not a technical challenge. Refactoring the middle tier requires discipline to avoid introducing errors, but should not affect other parts of the system. It is a well designed interface contract that makes for an extensible system. This is why SOA with its service contracts is appealing.
Unfortunately, UML doesn't address interfaces (or at least poorly addresses them). It seems obsessed with minutiae in a parody of academic distraction. The only time I see UML in my daily development is in technical books and articles, and even then a Visio diagram would usually work better.
With regards to your objective of developing "ways to improve UML interaction to be more practical," I encourage you to ignore UML initially and define your problem clearly. It seems to me that the problem does not involve UML, but the need for communication between developers, sometimes from different cultures, and on separate continents. You are most likely interested in the visual display of information as it pertains to object oriented analysis.
If I am correct in my assumptions, then I do have some resources to recommend. As I mentioned in the blog comment that you referenced, Peopleware is essential reading for understanding the human interactions surrounding software development. For understanding objects, and by understanding I mean grok in fullness, I have found nothing better than The Object Primer. Finally, when it comes to the visual representation of information, there is only one person you need to study, and that person is Edward Tufte. Tufte makes mincemeat of systems such as UML.
If you are looking for a software solution to capture design ideas, then you should be familiar with mindmapping applications such as Mindjet or FreeMind. I also have begun using Microsoft OneNote and have found it useful.
Cheers,
++Alan