for my own personal work? no, i find it to be a waste of time. however, i do diagram and plan and such. its just not structured, like UML, its more free-form

for my own personal work? no, i find it to be a waste of time. however, i do diagram and plan and such. its just not structured, like UML, its more free-form to help me plot my ideas. for my real job? as a software engineer, yes, some, because artifacts are required by the company (and often written into contracts), and things are often designed by one person and coded by another. documents are required to communicate how it "should" work, and UML is a good standard so that a specific document can be understood by everyone. having said all that, i can see the need for planning and structure documents if your ideas need to be coded by others. however, if you're creating the documents and cutting code yourself, i think they're a waste of time.