The UML Guy is Martin L. Shoemaker, a requirements analyst, architect, and C# developer (past Microsoft Visual C# MVP) who has taught UML, Analysis and Design Practices, .NET programming, Process Improvement, and more to clients such as Microsoft, Siemens, and the University of Michigan. Now he’s ready to help your team, with a tailored combination of consulting, mentoring, and classroom training to help your developers meet their current challenges and add new skills to manage the challenges to come.

Through TheUMLGuy.com, Martin offers custom software development services in .NET, including:

• .NET Analysis, Architecture, and Design. As a published expert in analysis and design, Martin will get your application started right, and that's half the battle.
• Desktop applications in WinForms and WPF.
• Web applications in Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC.
• Distributed applications using Web Services and WCF.
• Windows Mobile applications.
• Tablet PC and Touch Screen applications.

To discuss your custom software needs, contact The UML Guy.

Coding is more than my profession, it's my craft and my art. It's like a giant puzzle where I have to figure out where the pieces are, what they are even, and how to fit them together to make a picture that no one can describe until they see the finished puzzle.

.NET has given me much more powerful puzzle pieces, leading to much greater finished puzzles. The capabilities Microsoft provides let me do in minutes what would once have taken literally months. And the tool set keeps growing every year, adding more and more power at my fingetips. There must be some solutions I can't build with .NET, but I can't imagine what they are.

But as my career has progressed, I've realized that Frederick Brooks was right when he wrote that technology isn't the essential element of any but the simplest solutions. There are engineering concerns much larger than the technology: requirements analysis, architecture, design, estimating, validation. Teams that concentrate too much on the technology are whittling away at the edges of the problem. If they whittle long enough, they manage to ship something; but the result is costly and unsatisfying.

For most software problems today, we don't need better technology; we need better understanding, so we can apply great technology like .NET in the most effective strategy. That's where my emphasis is today: understand the problem as efficiently as possible, so I can apply all those powerful .NET puzzle pieces to build better solutions than ever.

-- Martin L. Shoemaker
(The UML Guy)