Software developers are increasingly recognizing the value of careful up-front requirements gathering in enhanced efficiency and reduced software defects. The best way to gather requirements accurately and precisely is with use cases and UML -- and this book walks you through the entire process, step-by-step. Both an excellent tutorial and a handy reference, Use Cases: Requirements in Context begins with a detailed overview of requirements gathering, its key challenges, and why traditional approaches often fail. Next, understand the key concepts underlying use cases; use case diagrams and scenarios; relationships and interactions; and the role of use cases in each major type of software development project. Review the four steps of the requirements gathering process, from problem statement through prototype; then walk through each iteration of the use case, step-by-step. The book includes insightful coverage of managing the requirements gathering process, building teams, and assuring quality -- plus a full chapter on the classic mistakes made in requirements gathering, and how to avoid them. For all systems analysts, project managers, and software engineers.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
Use Cases: Requirements in Context came about, as most books probably
do, as the result of a complaint. We felt that there weren't any good books
that addressed use cases for requirements gathering. It seemed that a lot of
people agreed that use cases were a perfectly good tool to solve the requirements
problem, but no one had put down on paper any detailed process to help people
understand how to use them this way. In fact, even as we write today, in late
1999, there is no book of this sort that we know of.
Requirements gathering has been a problem on almost every project we've been
involved with. The fuzzy nature of requirements makes working with them slippery
and unintuitive for most software analysts. Use cases are the first tool we've
seen that addresses the specification and communication concerns usually associated
with requirements gathering.
Although use cases in themselves are quite intuitive, the process around them
is often done poorly. The questions that people have--How many iterations do
I do? How fine-grained should a use case be?--are not answered or even addressed
in most texts. This is probably because they are hard questions and the answers
can vary greatly from one situation to another. However, they are important
questions, and we decided to describe our own best practices as a first volley
in what we hope will become a spirited industry dialog on how to generate requirements
that will address user needs.
Use Cases: Requirements in Context is a practical book for the everyday
practitioner. As consultants in the information technology industry, we employ
use cases to specify business systems as part of our daily lives. We think we
understand the issues facing people when they deliver software using tools such
as the Unified Modeling Language and use cases. Our main intent is not to describe
use case notation, although we do address that. Instead, we show a requirements
process that addresses requirements gathering in a way that produces quality
results.
While writing, we considered the factors that cause problems in requirements
gathering, and we developed a use case method for delivering a requirements-oriented
set of deliverables. The methodology breaks down the activity of producing requirements
into a series of steps, and it answers the questions that usually come up when
people employ use cases. This book relates directly to the real work of delivering
a specification, managing that effort with a team, and getting the most bang
for your buck.
The sample use cases and use case diagrams that appear throughout the book
are also presented in Appendixes B and C. These appendixes demonstrate the development
of the use cases and other requirements analysis artifacts through each phase
of their development. Appendix B documents a business system for real estate,
and Appendix C documents a business system for the garment industry.
We hope you enjoy this book. It was a labor of love for us. This is a process
that works well for us. If it works for you, too, that's great. If it doesn't,
perhaps you can adapt some of the tools, ideas, or suggestions to your own way
of addressing the requirements problem.
0201657678P04062001
From the Back Cover
* Reduce the incidence of duplicate and inconsistent requirements;
* Communicate requirements that are understandable to both users and developers;
* Communicate a vision of what the application needs to do without the distractions inherent in a coded prototype;
* Document the entire requirements process clearly and efficiently.
Use Cases: Requirements in Context first examines the difficulties of requirements gathering and briefly introduces both use cases and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Using detailed examples that run through the book, it then elaborates a four-step method for establishing requirements--an iterative process that produces increasingly refined requirements. Drawing on their own extensive experience, the authors offer practical advice on how to manage this process, including guidance on planning, scheduling, and estimating. They also dedicate an entire chapter to the common mistakes made during requirements capture and specification, particularly those related to use case creation.
This detailed, hands-on book shows you how to:
* Describe the context of relationships and interactions between actors and applications using use case diagrams and scenarios;
* Specify functional and non-functional requirements;
* Create the candidate use case list;
* Break out detailed use cases and add detail to use case diagrams;
* Add triggers, preconditions, basic course of events, and exceptions to use cases.
Other tools examined in this book include the stakeholder interview, use case name filters, the context matrix, user interface requirements, team organization, and quality assurance. 0201657678B04062001
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Useful Use Cases,
By R. Williams "code slubber" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Use Cases: Requirements in Context (Paperback)
The best thing about this book is that the authors are not meekly presenting just a stream of bland bromides that echo the sentiments of a million other talking heads. On the contrary, they are quite opinionated and their opinions often illuminate some of the most important issues in the whole raging process debate. Specifically, their discussion of the uselessness of requirements that just appear as a gigantic list of commandments is truly on target. (The writers espouse attaching requirements to the appropriate [and specific] use case.) They also do a good job of dealing with the issue of scope and developing use cases for specific uses. Everyone who's read about use cases has confronted the issue of how to 'refine' them but this book does a better job than most at underlining the importance of scope in the iterative process.The downsides of this book (IMHO) are: 1. The diagrams are all very simplistic. There really is no point in using a pictographic medium if there's nothing there. 2. The models that are talked about are also too simplistic (but I say that about every book). 3. There is a little bit of smugness about how *their* way is the sane and obvious answer to all that ails developers. Still, I think this is one of the best Use Case books out there.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Use Case Book I've Read So Far,
By Laus Deo (Colorado Springs, CO USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Use Cases: Requirements in Context (Paperback)
Programmers naturally hate use cases. They seem boring, and having seen hundreds of them (written by others and handed to me) over the years, I had lost hope that this practice would ever be of any benefit. I had grown tired of constantly reading varying levels of abstraction and `use-case-itis'. All this, despite the fact that Jacobson's original work and the UDP incorporation of use cases as central to that process was clearly a better way to go than wading through hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages of `shall' statements that accompany most projects (and too often, lead to their failure). Then I read this book. I now use it regularly in every requirements-related class I teach, and I tell every programmer I meet to buy this book. Imagine a use case book that programmers can actually get excited about! This book blazes new territory and its practical insights and humor make it a fun read, as well. Here are the great highlights: These last two items make the book stand out. Understanding the importance of business rules as enterprise-wide invariants that span use cases is ground-breaking. The four UDP iterations are ingenious because they can help to enforce the proper level of abstraction, which is a big problem area for use cases. Try it, you'll like it! In addition, the book is loaded with great practical advice and examples of good (and bad!) use case text. And finally, the authors present the most compelling arguments I've ever heard for ditching traditional requirements-gathering methods (which have clearly FAILED), because use cases are, after all, requirements IN CONTEXT (like the title says). If every use case writer read this book and followed it's advice, the software crisis would be dealt a serious blow. Bottom line : If you write use cases (or worse, are forced to implement bad use cases at gunpoint), get this book!
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book but where's the templates?,
By Todd Clarke (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Use Cases: Requirements in Context (Paperback)
This book is very concise and super helpful with it's concrete examples. This is the best book on documenting requirements that I have seen and I have been lokking for quite some time. Sure wish though there was a CD that had Word templates! Seems silly for me to have to create all these from scratch when they are right there in the book. Darn.
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