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Topic: Requirements Gathering
Title: Writing Effective Use Cases
Rating:
 Star rating
ISBN: 0201702258
Description:  
If there's one book that can be credited with popularizing use cases, this is it. Alistair Cockburn shares his applied knowledge and does so in a very digestible format. This handbook is a self-study guide full of real-world examples, exercises, and solutions to which any analyst or designer can relate. Use cases are a form of documenting systems requirements and behavioral design specifications. Written well, they offer benefits to all who participate in the development life cycle. This includes analysts, designers, project managers, developers, testers, and even end users. Commit yourself to reading through all of the examples. Studying them will sharply hone your own skills in discriminating between good and bad use cases. Mr. Cockburn's book takes the reader through the writing process, highlighting both good and bad examples. He makes no claims that any of these examples are perfect, and that is perhaps the greatest element of his book. The only area that this book does not explore in enough detail is the translation of documented use cases into user interface designs. For this, Mr. Cockburn defers to another great book, Constantine & Lockwood's Software for Use. Even so, some screen shots and comments about the user interfaces in the examples would help readers tie the whole picture together. Still, this book is an invaluable reference tool. Poorly written use cases can result in delays and increased costs for your project. Many designers and developers assume that they are capturing the necessary behavioral requirements in their written use cases, but closer inspection reveals that key elements of use cases are often overlooked. Translating use cases to highly usable interfaces is as much of an art, as it is a science. If you are looking for a book that will help you and your teams harness the benefits of use cases, this one is as good as it gets.

Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Year Published: 2000
Author: Alistair Cockburn
Order Book: Amazon.com

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