The Five Steps are as follows:

1. Define. Identify the requirements of your system via Use Case Diagrams. Add other diagrams where they shed light on the use cases.

2. Refine. Detail the steps in each requirement via scenarios captured in Activity Diagrams. Add other diagrams where they shed light on the activities.

3. Assign. Use the Activity Diagrams to assign the steps to elements of your system.

4. Design. Show the relations among the elements with Component Diagrams. Add other diagrams where they shed light on the components.

5. Repeat/iterate/drill down/divide and conquer. Narrow the scope of your process to individual elements (designed with Class Diagrams); or expand it out to whole systems (designed with Deployment Diagrams). Add other diagrams wherever they help you understand the system. Repeat Steps 1 through 4 as appropriate for the current scope. Like Boehm's Spiral development process, Evolutionary Development, and many other modern processes, Five-Step UML is an incremental, recursive approach.