Comments on: What Are Use Case Scenarios?

By: Scott Sehlhorst

Scott Sehlhorst — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:03:18 +0000

Thanks Yamen! A context diagram is a description of which systems (either physical or abstract) interact as part of a solution. A use case is a depiction of what is done by/with the system. Use case diagrams provide some information about how use cases are structured within a body of documentation (who uses which use cases, how was the problem structured as a set of use cases (extends, etc)). Personally, I find use case diagrams to be almost pure overhead - a mapping of actors to use cases provides almost all of the benefits, is easier to consume, and much easier to create and manage. Thanks again!

By: yamen

yamen — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 09:31:35 +0000

Thank you scott , you are super techer . But can tell me the compartive between context daigram and usecase daigram . thanks .

By: Scott Sehlhorst

Scott Sehlhorst — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:09:11 +0000

Thanks Brian, very much! And welcome to Tyner Blain – I hope you stick around, and keep contributing like you just did.

There are at least the following similarly named things: use scenario, user scenario, use case, use case scenario.

Cockburn, at least, defines “use(r) scenario” to mean the same thing as what I called a “use case scenario”. I intentionally included the word “case” to make sure that people didn’t confuse it with the abstract market situation that Pragmatic describes.

As you point out – I didn’t explain that very well. Now, hopefully, others will find this discussion. Thanks for pointing it out.

By: Brian Felder

Brian Felder — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:10:05 +0000

Scott,

Fantastic content on the site. I just found this after hearing about it at Pragmatic’s PPM course.

One comment on this page: Pragmatic uses the term “use scenario” (not “use case scenario,” as you use here) as a means to describe a market problem that needs solving. That is, what is the user trying to accomplish, and is not able to, that creates the problem at hand?

That’s quite different from the “use case scenario” described here, which is essentially a path through a use case — which is also a useful concept, just different. It might be worth differentiating between these two concepts on the site.

Thanks again for the great content.

Brian