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Peter Van der Straaten

Alistair.Cockburn.us | Why I still use use cases - 1 views

  • XP pretty much banned use cases, replacing them with the similar sounding “user stories”
  • Scrum did similar, using the “product backlog” instead of user stories
  • Yet as I go around projects, I keep running across organizations suffering from three particular, real, painful, and expensive problems
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  • User stories and backlog items don’t give the designers a context to work from
  • don’t give the project team any sense of “completeness
  • don’t provide a good-enough mechanism for looking ahead at the difficulty of upcoming work
  • Staring at the set of extension conditions in a use case lets the analysts suss out which ones will be easy and which will be difficult, and to stage their research accordingly
  • Here 5 reasons why I still write use cases
  • The list of goal names provides executives with the shortest summary of what the system will contribute to the business and the users
  • The main success scenario of each use case provides everyone involved with an agreement as to what the system will basically do, also, sometimes more importantly, what it will not do.
  • The extension conditions of each use case provide the requirements analysts a framework for investigating all the little, niggling things that somehow take up 80% of the development time and budget
  • The use case extension scenario fragments provide answers to the many detailed, often tricky business questions
  • The full use case set shows that the investigators have throught through every user’s needs, every goal they have with respect to the system, and every business variant involved
  • how much should be written up front to get the project estimate into a safe place
  • several sticky parts for people using use cases
  • iteration/sprint lengths are so short that it is not practical to implement an entire use case in just one of them.
  • Writing good use cases (or any other requirements) requires thinking, communicating, and thinking again. It is much easier just to write user-story tags on index cards and let the project blow up later
  • We have adopted many of the concepts of Agile development—such as daily build and test, build the smallest piece of functionality that delivers value, etc.—but have retained our up-front work. It’s worked extremely well
Peter Van der Straaten

Alistair.Cockburn.us | A user story is the title of one scenario whereas a use case is ... - 0 views

  • As a … I want… so that…” is a new-fangled user story format. The original XP user story format had no rules, so you could simply highlight any phrase in a use case and call it a user story. Personally, I feel sorry for anyone who has to write “As a… I want… so that…” for 200 user stories. Kind of like being kept after school and having to write “I will not write silly user stories in class” 100 times
  • A use case pretty much by definition contains multiple stories. A use case is a collection of scenarios related to the primary actor’s goal – some scenarios show the actor interacting with the system and the system interacting with other systems so that they succeed with the goal, some show failure. That’s all in the nature of a use case. see Structuring use cases with goals (discussion: Re: Structuring use cases with goals) from 1995. A use case written for this will occupy between half a page for a shortish one to 2 pages for a long one. A user story is a nickname for a single scenario – it contains neither the information content of the scenario nor failure or alternate paths. A user story typically occupies 1/2 to one sentence no matter its size.
  • (p.s. Agile was supposed to reduce bureaucracy and overhead, not add to it. :) Alistair
Peter Van der Straaten

Use Cases of Mass Destruction | Dr Dobb's - 1 views

  • examined the effectiveness of use cases;
  • two fundamental observations
  • 1. Use cases, when used properly, can be an effective form of requirements. 2. From an industry perspective, use cases may have a negative impact on overall productivity.
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  • bureaucrats often want you to make your use cases more complex and wordy than they need to be
  • many organizations are struggling with use cases
  • use cases have had a negative impact on our overall productivity across the IT industry
  • Use-case modeling specialists
  • use cases are a critical part of anything you do, whether it's appropriate or not
  • They're very good for exploring usage requirements, but not so good for exploring user-interface or data requirements, business rules, or constraints
  • too many people arguing about formatting issues, content issues, traceability issues
Peter Van der Straaten

Use-Case 2.0: the Power of Use Cases with the Lightness of User Stories by Piermarco Bu... - 0 views

  •  
    Note: Nice presentation, but should check for content (it states that use cases are test cases, and that would at least need some additional instructions).
Peter Van der Straaten

Use-Case 2.0 ebook - 0 views

  • re-focuses on the essentials and offers a slimmed down, leaner way of working, for software teams seeking the benefits of iterative, incremental development at an enterprise level
  • Author: Ivar Jacobson, Ian Spence, Kurt Bittner
  • Based on several years of work with many of our customers around the world, we have revamped use cases to provide a scalable approach to managing requirements for agile projects and programs.
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    Free e-book (after registration)
Peter Van der Straaten

The Rational Edge -- June 2002 -- Top Ten Ways Project Teams Misuse Use Cases -- and Ho... - 0 views

  • Be ambiguous about the scope of your use cases.
  • Don't be concerned with defining business rules.
  • Write your first and only use case draft in excruciating detail.
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  • use case nicely describes an aspect of its behavior
  • Don't Bother with Any Other Requirements Representations
  • behavior, structure, dynamics, and control mechanisms.
Peter Van der Straaten

User story - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • Comparing with use cases
  • Kent Beck, Alistair Cockburn, Martin Fowler and others discussed this topic further on the c2.com wiki (the home of extreme programming).[16]
  • "User Story And Use Case Comparison". c2.com.
Peter Van der Straaten

eBook: Requirements Definition and Management for Dummies - Blueprint Software Systems - 0 views

  • Requirements Definition and Management for DummiesSmart businesses know that high-quality requirements are the cornerstone of any successful software development project. This fun and friendly ebook is an introduction to the role that is central to requirements: the Business Analyst. It explains why the role is so critical and how Business Analysts are transforming software projects.
    • Peter Van der Straaten
       
      Content quite superficial; It's somewhat usefull for RE, RM and BA newbies. Mostly advertises the blueprint tool
  •  
    VALT TEGEN: Relatief oppervlakkig, en meer een vehikel om eigen tool aan de man te brengen.
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