Coll Associates

Experts in Requirements and Use Case Analysis

Duration:2 Days, on location

Description:  This course provides attendees with both theory and practice in writing use cases for the requirements of a software system, by working sequenced exercises in small groups, and discussing the results with the class at large.

Audience:  This course is for anyone who is faced with gathering and documenting the requirements for a software system. These people are typically from an IT department, but possibly from the human factors group, marketing department, or from a user community.

Goals:  The attendees will 1) be able to describe to others what a use case is, is good for, and ways of writing them; 2) be able to collect and organize information about the users' goals for the system, and to draft the functional requirements for a system; and 3) know the limitations of use case requirements, as well as alternative writing forms.

Contents of Course:

This course is based on continuous group exercises and discussions, rather than the slide-based lecture form frequently encountered in industry courses. In each section of the course a concept gets introduced, the groups do an exercise and discuss, and the entire room discusses their results. In this way, each person gets to participate in both exercises and discussions.

In the first day, we cover topics such as usage narratives, system scope, actors, goal levels, pre- and post-conditions, and scenarios. In the second day we work through failure discovery, failure handling and sewing together use cases of different levels.

The topics in the course include:

·What is a use case? What does one look like? How are multiple use cases organized?

·How do use cases fit into the overall requirements process and requirements document?

·The four steps in writing a use case.

·Finding the boundaries of the system.

·Searching for actors and their goals.

·Establishing the scope and level of the use case.

·Writing a simple scenario of usage.

·Searching for exceptional and failure situations.

·Linking use cases.

·Layering use cases for larger systems.

·Protecting against technology change.

·Use cases and the new UML standard.

·Templates and tools for use cases.

·Making use cases easier to read.

·Common mistakes, subtle mistakes, mistakes with UML.

·Alternative writing styles, alternative formats, alternative tools.

Exercises:

Several different domains will be used for exercises, for different degrees of difficulty. For each exercise, we shall write, then peer review the writing, and discuss the issues that came up in the writing. There are many aspects of writing use cases in a consistent way that bedevil the writer, and many ways of dealing with those difficulties. Each person will have a chance to develop their own preferences.

Equipment needed:

Paper and pen/pencil, flipcharts to hang group work output on the walls.

Cost:

· $8,900 plus travel for the first 10 attendees, $290 per attendee after that.

· Standard class size: 16 - 24 people.

· Course cost includes a copy of the Jolt Productivity Award - winning book Writing Effective Use Cases for each participant

 

Writing Effective Use Cases