Agile / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements Models / Software development / Use Cases

Agile Development of Use Cases

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We proposed a strategy for developing use cases as part of an agile development methodology last week. In this article, we will look in more detail at that proposal, and also look at a specific way to apply agile techniques to the development of the use cases. What we propose is essentially incremental development of use cases, and starting what comes next as soon as you can.

Requirements / Requirements Models / UML Modeling

How To Use UML Statechart Substates

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UML Statecharts can be very effective modeling tools for describing systems and software requirements. They provide a clear framework for identifying business rules. The same business rules often apply to multiple states – defining a commonality for those states. There is an element called a substate in UML statecharts that can be used to make it more obvious that a particular business rule applies to multiple states.

Agile / Business Analysis / Prioritization / Product Management / Project Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements Models / Software development / Use Cases

How To Start The Use Case Process For Agile Software Development

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One of the goals of agile software development is to deliver value quickly and iteratively. One of the most effective ways to begin the software development process is with use cases. To deliver with agility, you start with the most valuable use case, bang it out, and then move on to the next most valuable use case. How do you know which use case is the most valuable if you haven’t defined all the use cases first?

Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements management software / Requirements Models / UML Modeling

UML Statecharts and Documenting Business Rules

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In yesterday’s article we compared use cases and UML statecharts as tools for discovering business rules. James Taylor asked a question about how we would document those rules, and then followed up my comment response with an article about business rules and RUP. In this article we move the conversation slightly forward – recognizing that we’re slowly entering the ocean of business process management.

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

Use Case vs. UML Statechart – Business Rules

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What is the better requirements management model for capturing business rules? The use case, or the UML statechart? In this article, we explore how customer orders are submitted and processed, and contrast how use cases and statecharts expose and document business requirements and business rules.

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.