"KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN POWER are synonymous," once said the great philosopher,
Francis Bacon. In today's global market, where competition is widespread,
knowledge and the ability to apply it provide perhaps the most important
advantage. This raises the question of how an organization can best
capture, communicate, and leverage knowledge in order to gain that
competitive advantage. Perhaps the answer is the Unified Modeling
Language (UML) from Rational Software and the Object Man-agement Group
(OMG).
The Unified Modeling Language
The UML is a modeling language for specifying, visualizing, constructing,
and documenting the artifacts of a system-intensive process. The UML
has gained significant industry sup-port through the UML Partners
Con-sortium and was submitted to the OMG for adoption as a standard.
In November 1997, the OMG adopted the UML. Let’s begin by defining
the
UML:
Unified. The UML was originally conceived by Rational Software
and three of the most prominent methodologists in the information
systems/technology industry: Grady Booch, James Rum-baugh,
and Ivar Jacobson. It represents the evolutionary unification of their
experience with other industry engi-neering best practices.
Modeling. With an emphasis on modeling, it focuses on how we
understandthe world around us. For example, how do we determine the
weight a bridge will support before we build it? Fundamentally, we
model the real thing in such a way that we can understand its characteristics
and manipulate its parameters to attain the desired results.
A model is an abstract representation of some other thing (which may
be real). It is more easily manipulated than, and facilitates our
understanding of, the thing it represents. This is critical where
constructing the real thing would be very costly.
Language. The UML functions as the means for expressing and
communi-cating knowledge. The UML brings to-gether the industry’s
best practices regarding how we understand the world around us and
how we represent and communicate that understanding; it provides a
best-of-breed mechanism for capturing, communicating, and leveraging
problem-solving artifacts. It has four distinguishing characteristics
in comparison to other modeling languages: It is general-purpose,
broadly applicable, tool supported, and industry standardized.
Among its other benefits, the market share held by industry and tool
vendors supporting it, widespread use of the methods founded by its
cre-ators, and its adoption by the OMG will make the UML a pivotal
force in
today’s businesses. However, it not only offers true opportunities,
but also various challenges.
Conclusively, the Unified Modeling Language is an evolutionary general-purpose,
broadly applicable, tool-supported, and industry standardized lan-guage
for specifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting the artifacts
of a system-intensive process. It is a fundamental communication mechanism
that empowers e-Zest to capture, communicate, and leverage strategic,
tactical, and operational business and technological knowledge on
an enterprise-wide scale. Such knowledge is applied to improve value
by increasing quality, reducing costs, and reducing time-to-market
while managing risks and being proactive to ever-increasing change
and complexity.