Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases: Through the Systems Development Life-Cycle [Paperback]

Ian Alexander (Editor), Neil Maiden (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470861940 | ISBN-13: 978-0470861943 | Publication Date: October 18, 2004 | Edition: 1

• Extending the scenario method beyond interface design, this important book shows developers how to design more effective systems by soliciting, analyzing, and elaborating stories from end-users
• Contributions from leading industry consultants and opinion-makers present a range of scenario techniques, from the light, sketchy, and agile to the careful and systematic
• Includes real-world case studies from Philips, DaimlerChrysler, and Nokia, and covers systems ranging from custom software to embedded hardware-software systems

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...this book is a breath of fresh air, providing practical guidance on incorporating techniques and approaches to the development cycle." - Usability Consultant

From the Back Cover

Communicating user needs – the requirements of a system – is a skill difficult to learn, pin down and put into practice. There is no single right way. Much of the recent history of large engineering projects has been a tale of waste and error, where system needs were not defined early, or carefully, enough. Carefully organised and themed, Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases presents the scenario – a powerful antidote to the complexity of systems and analysis - as an effective technique for discovering, communicating and organising requirements at any stage in the system life-cycle.

This book presents a range of scenario techniques from light, sketchy and agile to careful and systematic, and celebrates diversity in requirements discovery and modelling. Including real world case studies from Nokia, Eurocontrol and DaimlerChrysler, the authors demonstrate a variety of practical approaches to show how to apply scenarios to projects throughout the life-cycle. Domain coverage spans custom software, integrations of COTS software packages, and embedded hardware/software systems. The scenario techniques described differ in many respects, but share a motivation to improve industrial practice, a clearly defined approach which has been applied on projects, and a grounding in theory.

Stories are quite insistent on one point: a tale is not over until it is finished in every detail. Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases communicates a practical approach to ensure that every detail of a project’s requirements is considered, making systems more reliable, safe, and secure. The rich wealth of stories will engage requirements engineers, developers, usability and human factors specialists, and systems and business analysts and students on requirements engineering courses.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (October 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470861940
• ISBN-13: 978-0470861943
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #597,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ian Alexander is an independent consultant, trainer and author specializing in Requirements Engineering, often using DOORS / DXL as the platform.

He has worked with organizations in transportation, telecommunications, aerospace, government and public service in the UK and around the world, on both implementation projects and process support.

He is the lead author of Writing Better Requirements (Addison-Wesley, 2002), Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases (Wiley, 2004), and Discovering Requirements (Wiley, 2009) (http://www.scenarioplus.org.uk). There are many free resources for use in discovering and organizing requirements on his website.

He is currently (2010) chairman of the BCS Requirements Engineering Specialist Group (http://www.resg.org.uk). He is a Chartered Engineer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good view of being customer focused in different industries, June 15, 2008

By 

Don V (Seattle, Wa USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases: Through the Systems Development Life-Cycle (Paperback)

This book covers lots of different ways that Scenarios and User Stories have been applied in multiple industries. I'm a fan of the methodology and so appreciated all of the different viewpoints. The book does suffer from being written from multiple authors with different agendas, and you may not find something of value in all of the chapters. However, I found it useful to see the different techniques and case studies and recommend it if you are looking for ways to become more customer focused.