Comparing UML and RML for Business Analysis

In this blog post, Anthony Chen compares the usage of Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Requirements Modeling Language (RML) in the business analysis activity. RML® is a language for modeling software requirements to organize and communicate large quantities of information, help identify missing requirements, give context to individual details within the overall collection of requirements, and represent different views of requirements details. Anthony Chen identifies two main issues with UML.

The first one is that the models of UML are fine but not sufficient. The second main issue is that UML provides models with no guidance to ensure that the requirements analysis is complete. He favours the RML, because its models focus instead on the view of the system from a users’ point of view and are constructed so that real business analysts have a shot at actually adopting them.