Showing Too Much Detail

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One team of developers we worked with proudly showed us over one hundred sequence diagrams they had constructed. Each diagram was like the one in Figure 21-3—only worse. There were twenty to thirty instances shown at the top of some of these diagrams. The team used really big pieces of paper to print out their masterwork. We asked them a couple of questions: “Do you maintain these diagrams—as the requirements change, do you update their details?” Their answer was a simple “No.” (Yikes.)

Figure 21-3: Example of sequence diagram with too much detail.

Often developers start drawing UML diagrams because they want to build a program. Each event line in our client’s sequence diagrams (for example) might become a method call from one object instance to another. Rather than clarify the interaction requirements for their software application, the team bogged down in unnecessary programming details before they even knew what to program.

 Warning   If you think to yourself, I could have written the program in less time than it took to create this diagram, then you have too much detail.

 Tip   You can avoid too much detail by thinking about whether a risk to the project exists if you don’t show the detail on your diagram. Often there is none. If you do find some risk to the progress of the project, than add a little more detail to the diagram.

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