Use Cases

A whitepaper written by requirements expert Ellen Gottesdiener of EBG Consulting (www.ebgconsulting.com) for IBM/Rational Software. As an analyst, you have the crucial task of defining the requirements for software that is to be built or acquired. Your task is crucial for a number of reasons. If software teams fail to define excellent requirements...

A set of 25 serious (and somewhat cynical) guides for abusing use cases by requirements expert Ellen Gottesdiener, of EBG Consulting, Inc. (www.ebgconsulting.com). Author: Ellen Gottesdiener

In the Unified Modeling Language (UML), use cases are visually represented as ellipses. However, in spite of its popularity and size, UML has little of practical use to offer modelers beyond this simple iconic representation. Trying to capture and present requirements using just use case diagrams can often render the otherwise useful technique of u...

Read about the lively Use Case Panel: Discussion Among the Gurus - a panel held at the 2002 Rational Users Conference. "Doug Rosenberg wouldn't have a 20-page use case. Ian Spence would. But, as Ellen Gottesdiener reminded the panel, it's not all about size. Welcome to the Use Case Panel: Discussion Among Use Case Gurus. And what a panel it ...

Years of experience in defining requirements have led to the development of a number of techniques and models to assist in the process. Among these, perhaps the most well-known model is the use case, the focus of this paper. If you have experience with use cases, you know how pivotal they are for supporting many project activities, and you may be ...

Just how important is it to fully develop your project’s requirements? After all, nailing down your requirements usually takes only 8% to 15% of your overall project effort. Truth be told, it’s not really something you’ll want to spend your resources and energy on—unless, that is, you care at all about the quality of your pr...

Effective communication among application development project stakeholders is often challenging, especially when the team is geographically distributed or time constrained. IBM® Rational® software helps organizations automate, integrate, and govern the core business process of software and systems delivery via the IBM Rational Software Delivery Pla...

A use case represents a case of use of a system, ideally one that captures a functional requirement in terms of an identifiable and testable goal. So, what is the best way to document a use case? Approaches to content range from diagrammatic to textual, formal to free form, expansive and detailed to brief and abstract. The approaches to tool usage ...

Geri Schneider Winters writes about whether or not you could write alternatives to alternatives in use cases.

There is no actual standard for the formatting of a use case specification, just guidelines and best practices.  Therefore, if using alternatives to alternatives in use cases makes the use case more clear - use it, by any means.

Author: Geri Schneider Winters

In this article, Geri Schneider Winters discusses the question of whether use cases can be used to document requirements for reports.

Author: Geri Schneider Winters

The Use Case Model describes the proposed functionality of the new system. A Use Case represents a discrete unit of interaction between a user (human or machine) and the system. A Use Case is a single unit of meaningful work; for example login to system, register with system and create order are all Use Cases. Each Use Case has a description which ...