Business Analysis / Business Process Modeling / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements Models / Use Cases

Use Case vs. Process Flow – Failure Handling

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Should you use use cases or process flow diagrams to document business requirements? At some level, they both document the same thing, they just document it differently. The best requirements will come from doing both – but what if you are forced to choose one? What are the tradeoffs between use cases and process flows? In this article we look at the documentation of failure handling.

Business Analysis / Communication / Consulting / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements Models

How To Visualize Stakeholder Analysis

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The first step of gathering requirements is to identify who can give you the requirements. Business processes include communication between different people inside the organization. Communication also includes people outside the organization. When gathering requirements, it can be easy to overlook the people who don’t use the software directly. Those people may still be stakeholders. Read on to see how to approach stakeholder analysis.

Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases

How To Write Use Case Preconditions and Triggers

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Use case writing is key to effective requirements management. Each use case represents a single idea or logically grouped behaviors. When you define a use case, there are several mistakes you can make. Preventing those mistakes is the first order of business. The second order of business is making sure that the use cases in the system work together. This requires an understanding of the context in which the use case happens. To fully understand a use case you have to know what is promised to be true before the use case happens, as well as what causes the use case to happen. These are subtly different.

Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models

Business Requirements, Project Scope, and Coupling

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Robin Goldsmith wrote an interesting article for RQNG about business requirements – what he calls “REAL” requirements. Gathering the right requirements demands more than just effective listening skills, you have to focus on the right problem. Robin brings up a theme we’ve discussed here in the past, and again in today’s article.

Business Analysis / Product Management / Project Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases

Software Cost Estimation With Use Case Points – Final Calculations

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The final step in project cost estimation with use case points is to do the math. First you identify the technical and environmental factors that influence your environment and describe your team. Then you analyze the use cases and actors that describe the expectations of the software and who has them. Finally, you bring it all together to do the math.

Business Analysis / Product Management / Project Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases

Software Cost Estimation With Use Case Points – Actor Analysis

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Software project cost estimation using use case points takes the approach of estimating the amount of effort based upon what the software is being asked to do – not an analysis of how someone chooses to do it. We’ve looked at technical and environmental factors that influence our estimate. And we’ve done a use case analysis to quantify how much work the software is being asked to do. The last area of analysis focuses on the users of the software.