[photonthug]

There’s truth in what you say and UML has some good ideas, but it’s not the one true way. One problem with it is that even if engineers can read it properly, diagrams often need to do several jobs at once, and communicate something to non-engineers, otherwise you are making diagrams all day!

[opello]

The various times I've encountered effective UML, it's been an organization's take on how to use it. I can't remember if the UML Distilled book references this kind of dialectic use but it seems like the only way I've seen buy-in for use and maintaining the diagrams as documentation.