
A look back at the best from this week in the past.

UML Class Diagrams can be used not only for documenting software design, but for documenting software requirements. One of the challenges in writing clear, unambiguous requirements is being precise about what a particular word means. This is especially true with symbolic terms like “quote” or “customer” - where everyone knows what they mean - but they mean different things to different people.

We read a lot about the value of listening to your customers and understanding your markets. We don’t hear as much about what happens when you ignore your customers. Thanks to documents exposed as part of a class action lawsuit, we get to see just how bad it can be. Maybe even billions of dollars.