Use Case Series: Introduction
Use cases can be difficult to talk about, because they immediately invoke so many different preconceptions and prejudices. High school English teachers know that some words aren’t just words – they are symbolic, and represent ideas. They had us write essays like “Who do I think is a hero” and everyone picks a different person, for different reasons.
This can be very powerful as just throwing out a loaded term like hero or use case communicates a lot more information than the handful of letters would explain. This is also very dangerous, when you throw a different idea than the one that the listener catches.
If you throw “brave fireman who saved my cat”, and your listener catches “big sandwich with mustard“, you’re in trouble.
Use cases suffer from this symbolic blessing-curse, but added to that are people’s past experiences. Executives may have a hazy recollection of “that big project that ran over budget had a bunch of use cases” and be predisposed to not wanting us to invest a lot of time in them.
Or even worse, people are likely thinking of firemen and kittens – everyone seems to have a different definition for use case.
In the next few posts, we will look at different ways to think about use cases, and pull together some of the more accepted definitions into one place, where we can contrast them and understand the differences.
Quick links to posts in this series
- Use case series: Introduction
- Use case series: Formal use case
- Use case series: Informal use case
- Use case series: UML 2.0 use case diagrams
- Free Informal Use Case Template
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January 4th, 2006 at 12:44 am
[...] There are a lot of topics in this space that I hope to post about. I have passions about process, requirements, development as an artistic expression, quality, and HCI (human-computer interfaces). I often find things as simple (or mundane) as an elegant algorithm or a brilliant UI affordance to be uplifting. I’ll also be writing collections of posts in series-format, covering topics like use cases, structured requirements, and general introductory material (for people who need a little more context than the regular posts contain). I will also post lists from time to time. I have two goals for this blog. [...]
January 4th, 2006 at 2:08 am
[...] Use case series: Introduction [...]
January 4th, 2006 at 11:38 am
[...] Use case series: Introduction [...]
January 6th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
[...] The kitten [...]
January 8th, 2006 at 2:20 am
[...] Use case series: Introduction [...]
January 26th, 2006 at 11:59 am
[...] If you’re new to this blog, you may want to look at the use case series. [...]
February 9th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
[...] We talked about informal use cases a while ago in our use case series. Over a series of posts, we are demonstrating the process of defining a software product. The next step, and subject of this post, is the creation of informal use cases to support the defined goals for the software. [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
[...] Use Case Series: Introduction - Tyner Blain (tags: usecase requirements_engineering) [...]