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 Models / UML Modeling / Use Cases
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Use Case vs. UML Statechart – Business Rules
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
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Use Case vs. Process Flow – Failure Handling
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 / Product Management / Project Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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Writing Use Cases For Estimation
You write use cases to define the scope of your project. Use cases describe what people are using your product to accomplish. Use cases provide a framework for defining the details of the product. You can estimate your project effort with use cases. But you have to write the use cases at the right level of detail.
Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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How To Write Use Case Preconditions and Triggers
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 / Project Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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Software Cost Estimation With Use Case Points – Free Excel Spreadsheet
We just completed a series of articles detailing how to use Use Case Points for software cost estimation. In this article we have a free MS Excel Spreadsheet for calculating use case points. Download it today to make it easier to do your project cost estimations.
Business Analysis / Product Management / Project Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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Software Cost Estimation With Use Case Points – Final Calculations
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
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Software Cost Estimation With Use Case Points – Actor Analysis
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.
Business Analysis / Product Management / Project Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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Software Cost Estimation With Use Case Points – Use Case Analysis
Software cost estimation with use case points is primarily driven by use case analysis. You take into account environmental and technical factors, but they are ultimately only modifiers of the analysis done on the use cases. Each use case contributes to the project cost estimate, and use cases of varying complexity have a varying influence on the cost estimate.