May
3
The Popularity of Use Cases
May 3, 2006 |
In my previous post, I briefly argued that one reason use cases have gained wide acceptance is that they can express a large number of different business requirements in a single form. In particular, they’re capable of capturing people, process, policy, and interaction requirements.
This flexibility is probably also the reason why there seem to be more books on writing use cases
Granted, the textual nature of a use case inevitably introduces ambiguity. There’s more to it than that, though. A use case can describe a system at several different levels: from describing the overall process flow, to a single interaction between the system and an order taker. It can be a black box, only depicting what the actor actually sees, or it can go into great detail about the behind-the-scenes flow of events. I’ve seen people get into lengthy debates about whether a particular scenario is or is not a use case, in a way that wouldn’t happen with, say, a class diagram.
A BA can understandably be tempted to learn use cases as a one-size-fits-all way of describing requirements. Don’t limit yourself to that, though. The use case is fine for the initial investigation, but it’s not unusual to find that another technique will allow you to specify the requirement more precisely later in the process.
Comments
What I'm Reading- Agile Requirements Information Model (4) – Subset For Agile Programs (a): Features and Feature BacklogScaling Software Agility
- The Great Implication of Context-Driven MethodologyJames Bach's Blog
- User stories versus Use CasesBusiness Analyst Blog
- Can Use Cases Possibly be Agile?Agile Product Owner (.com)
- A little bit of levity for the holidays from iRiseThe iRise Blog
- The end of reposiphilia?The Forrester Blog For Technology Product Management & Marketing Professionals
- IT ethics and the recessionIT Project Failures
- Risk Assessment ModelingEDS' Next Big Thing Blog: Read and Respond to What the EDS Fellows Say About Technology
- Test Requirements, Don't Test CodeHerding Cats
- Enterprise architecture is optionalBizRules Blog