Use cases are a great tool for establishing the scope of a project. They provide a framework for defining what needs to be implemented (if it doesn’t support a use case, we don’t need to implement it). They also set expectations with stakeholders (here’s what you can do with the […]
Polls / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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Use case series: Informal Use Case
The informal use case is the tool of the Agile Requirements Manager. It is a paragraph describing the user’s goals and steps. Also referred to as a basic use case.
Communication / Consulting / Requirements
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Stay away from my users!
We’ve dealt with user representatives who believed that they knew better than the users. We’ve dealt with people afraid to let consultants talk to the users, because the consultants might mis-set expectations and create bad will when the development team fails to deliver. We’ve dealt with over-protective information-hogs, who don’t want to telegraph their moves, for risk that they might lose control of the project, or lose credit for the project to someone else. How do we get past these barriers?
Polls / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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Use Case Series: Formal Use Case
This is the classic use case as described by someone who talks about Software Engineering. All of the training classes (other than Agile classes) that I’ve been to teach formal use case development as a component in a system of requirements management.
Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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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 […]
Process Improvement / Software development / Test Automation / Testing
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Marc Clifton’s Advanced Unit Testing articles
In a previous post, we mentioned a link to the first in a series of articles by Marc Clifton at The Code Project, a .NET resource site. Here are the links to all 5 of the articles in Marc’s series.
Reviews / Software development / Software Reviews / UX
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Watson from Intellext
OK, you have to go download Watson, which provides contextual search (of the web, from your desktop). The context that it uses is whatever application is open on your desktop – specifically MS Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, IE and Firefox. This morning I was working on a “How to design unit […]
Communication / Requirements / Writing
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Secret decoder ring
I’m having a little trouble reading the spec – I left my secret decoder ring at home! Ever hear that before? A set of requirements that makes perfect sense to one team member can be completely unintelligible to others. Requirements written in business-speak, or full of accounting jargon may be […]
Usability / UX
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Getting Past The ‘Suck Threshold’
Kathy Sierra writes a great post in her blog, Creating Passionate Users, that talks about the requirement to make things interesting. The driving objective is to accelerate the user adoption curve – which Kathy calls the Kick Ass Curve. Any user is initially forced to focus on the tool, and […]