Jim,
I provided some
feedback and change-tracked changes to the Word template, mostly to simplify it
and reduce the opportunity for bad practices by analysts who are new to use cases
(https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=167924
).
The excel-based
approach doesn’t seem like a very “elegant” solution to the
valid problem of shallow requirements management skillsets that you pointed out
( I commented here https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=168275
). It also seems to violate the “use simplest tools”
philosophy. Excel is more difficult to version control, since it has no
merge capability. It lacks “the power of plain text.”
For a lot of new
adopters, the paradigm shift isn’t having
use cases. Lots of big lumbering projects with three binders
of “the system shall blah blah” requirements also have “use cases,” but
they treat them as a kind of afterthought. The UP paradigm shift is doing
use case-based requirements, where the use cases are the primary way that we
express the functional intent we have for the solution. Treating use
cases this way is essential to enabling iterative development, because you can
incrementally refine a use case over time a lot easier than thousands of disjointed
“system shall” statements.
So I’d suggest
we point adopters in the right direction with a series of use case examples at various levels of specification.
For example, we might have a use case that’s just “identified,”
then one with just the basic flow and a few special requirements, and finally a
fully-specified example. The purpose is to demonstrate how you can
incrementally refine the intent of the system based on immediate goals. A
classic example is Craig Larman’s “next-generation POS system”
in Applying UML and Patterns. Maybe he’d open-source the
examples?
Thanks,
Nate
From:
epf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:epf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Ruehlin
Sent: Saturday, February 03, 2007
4:41 PM
To: epf-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [epf-dev] Looking for Use
Case Templates & Examples
Hello all,
We’ve been discussing how we can make writing use
cases easier for a wider range of practitioners, e.g. experienced analysts,
developers using use cases for the first time, old-timers who are used to
decomposing their requirements, etc. We think that offering a variety of use
case templates will help us in this endeavor, as long as we can describe the
best circumstances in which to use each template.
If you have any use case templates that have been useful for
you, please consider contributing them to OpenUP/Basic. Attach any templates
you’d like to contribute as a reply to this email and we’ll
consider them at the February F2F meeting this Thurs/Fri.
Examples of the two templates we’re currently
considering are attached to the following bugzillas:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=167924
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=168275
Thanks,
Jim
____________________
Jim Ruehlin, IBM Rational
RUP Content Developer
Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) Committer www.eclipse.org/epf
email: jruehlin@xxxxxxxxxx
phone: 760.505.3232
fax:
949.369.0720