4.7. Conclusions

We began this chapter with a discussion about managing software complexity, and we end it with a drill school lecture on software modeling. Software architects must know the fundamentals as well as be able to use them creatively to achieve architectural goals.

If your organization has not yet adopted a standard notation. and your developers are not literate in it, UML provides an opportunity to introduce new modeling practices. UML is a standard notation from the Object Management Group, an ISO-affiliated organization. UML is an industry consensus supported by most of the major authorities in object-orientation. UML's key benefit is its clarity of description, since it is relatively devoid of cryptic symbols, such as "crows' feet" used by precursor notations to represent cardinality. UML is the first object-oriented modeling notation which is widely recognized and understandable by the majority of software practitioners.