Patterns for Effective Use Cases (The Agile Software Development Series) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Paul Bramble (Author), Alistair Cockburn (Author), Andy Pols (Author) "I understand the requirements, but what does it actually do?..." (more)
Key Phrases: use case terminates, lower level use cases, use case writers, Book Flight, Wings Over the World, User Goal Main Success Scenario (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

First book to specifically address use cases with the proven and popular development concept of patterns. Guidelines are included for readers to measure the quality of their use cases. Softcover.

From the Back Cover

Use cases have become an integral part of modeling software requirements, but many software developers are discovering that writing effective use cases is more difficult than they had anticipated. An understanding of the basic principles of use cases is not enough. Software developers need a source of objective criteria by which to judge quality and effectiveness.

Patterns for Effective Use Cases provides this set of objective criteria. Written by experienced use case practitioners, this book fills a critical information gap by presenting a pattern language that contains over thirty patterns, providing simple, elegant, and proven solutions to the most common problems in use case development. These patterns distill and define the properties and characteristics of quality use cases. As such, they facilitate the development of original use cases and provide a diagnostic tool for evaluating existing ones.

The book opens with a review of use cases and pattern fundamentals, along with a discussion of the requirements-gathering team. These patterns address the use case development process, the internal structure of use cases, and the relationships among use cases within the system as a whole. Examples of patterns include:

• BreadthBeforeDepth
• VisibleBoundary
• EverUnfoldingStory
• IntentionRevealingName
• PreciseAndReadable
• LeveledSteps
• InterruptsAsExtensions
• RedistributeTheWealth

Each pattern discussion includes at least one example demonstrating its real-world application, highlighting both the benefits of using the pattern and the consequences of not doing so. In addition, the book presents guidelines for the effective use of UML with relevant patterns.

Anyone involved in use case writing or requirements gathering will find Patterns for Effective Use Cases an indispensable handbook and reference.

0201721848B07302002

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (August 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201721848
• ISBN-13: 978-0201721843
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #361,564 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This item is part of The Agile Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good advice but fails to address the real UC issues, July 28, 2003

By	"83step" (Australia) - See all my reviews

This book attempts to take use cases to a higher level of science and in part succeed. Its plus points are discussions on management of use cases and the processes a team goes through in completing the creation / validation cycle. There's a lot of good sense here. Some of the patterns are useful. However, there's also a lot of regurgitation from various other texts and papers, some written by the authors themselves. And some key aspects are missing, aspects that are really important to industry and others that have concerned academia. Industry is not too worried about how to name use cases these days; that's easy. They want to be able to estimate how long it will take to build the system from use case points, for instance, or how to achieve forward traceability to the design and maintain traceability back to the requirements and business strategies (not the same thing exactly as the use case goal - which typically is not to stuff up and to make the principal actor happy). Academics are concerned too with effort estimation, with grammar and consistency checking, with dependencies and product lines, and non-functional requirements and whether use cases are at all to do with requirements in the first place and what they are no good for. Not whether we can build a little online booking web site - we can already do that. Though the book does not set out to answer these difficult questions, in its 200-odd pages, it ought to have, since this is what we really want to know about. So, though the book is excellent on what it does address, there's a lot of over kill in this. What's missing is what it does not address - all the hard problems we really need answers to.

41 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Overkill, November 15, 2002

By A Customer

The fact that this book describes a "pattern" named PreciseAndReadable should tell you what you need to know. If you need to be told that use cases should be precise and readable, or that you should name them with active verb phrases (VerbPhraseName), or that they should describe things of value to the business people (UserValuedTransactions), or that you should involve those people in the process of writing them (ParticipatingAudience), or that you should stop writing them when they make those people happy (QuittingTIme), you'll certainly get some value from this book, but it's clear evidence that your problems run considerably deeper than this book will be able to address.

This represents 25 pages of fundamentally simple content spread across 200 pages, and in a thoroughly pretentious manner to boot. Avoid.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep Thought about Use Cases, November 24, 2002

By	D. Olson "Olaf Red Cabbage" (Flagstaff, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The people who will be attracted to this book will be people who are really going to be involved in use case development, whether as actual writers, consulting engineers, subject matter experts, managers, or any other stakeholders in the process. Overall, I found the book to be well written, quite engaging, and, in the main portion where all the patterns are described, nicely organized to enable the reader to almost subconsciously understand how to navigate the pattern language. From a patterns perspective, the collection is more like a true pattern language than many other collections that make such claims and the interrelationships and movement through the language show that the authors did a great deal of work to make the language comprehensive while still keeping it lean. Although I am a veteran use case writer, in reading this text I learned many things that I wish I had known when I was in that practice. The authors have done a superb job at extracting what is the essence of good practice at all levels in developing use cases, and I think that the book could find a spot on many, many software professionals' shelves. Even more importantly, I think they would actually read it. In fact, I think they would study it. I know I did.