The Baker’s Dozen of Use Cases
Use cases have become a core part of the requirements analyst’s arsenal. Used well they can bring dramatic increases in customer satisfaction and a whole host of other subtle benefits to software development.
The use case itself is very simple in concept: describe the functionality of the system in terms of interactions between the system and its external interactors. The focus of the use case is system usage, from an external perspective.
Despite this apparent simplicity, requirements analysts frequently struggle to write coherent, consistent use cases that can be used to facilitate development. Often, the use case analysis becomes an exercise in confusion, incomprehension and the dreaded ‘analysis paralysis’.
This article aims to aid use case writers by presenting a set of rules to follow when performing use case analysis. The rules are designed to avoid common pitfalls in the analysis process and lead to a much more coherent set of requirements.
