Seeking UML tips or alternatives

[Nigel Hamilton]

Hi,

>I'm working on a Perl project that's got pretty large. I've been putting
together a detailed project >plan for the management and also some of the
investors. They want it to include clear diagrams >and I've been recommended
UML, the problem is I haven't used UML before and it's looking >pretty
daunting.

    I wouldn't get stuck on any modelling language per-se as the main goal
is to communicate what's going on and that depends on your target audience.
I think the first step would be to run an automatic UML generator over the
codebase[1].

   Hopefully there should be some nice structures in the image - but it also
might look like a big hairball. Does the image do a good job of
communicating to newbies what's going on? Probably not. So then it's over to
you to simplify it further, which has two benefits. First, you will start to
clarify your own mental model of what the hell is going on and second you
can start to distill the essential bit that management are interested in[2].
Ideally you should end up with something you understand and that someone
else with much less knowledge can understand too[3].

Nige

[1]
http://search.cpan.org/~agent/UML-Class-Simple-0.16/lib/UML/Class/Simple.pm
[2] A pretty pic that they can put in the business plan?
[3] this may look nothing like UML