Exploring User Requirements with Use Cases

Description

Use cases are an effective and widely used technique for eliciting software requirements. The use-case approach focuses on the goals that users have with a system, rather than emphasizing system functionality. This one-day seminar presents the use-case approach to requirements elicitation in a practical and straightforward fashion. Following the seminar, an attendee will be able to lead and participate in a use-case elicitation workshop, write use case descriptions at various levels of detail, review use cases, and apply use cases to develop the functional requirements for a software system. Many practice sessions give the student opportunities to try some of the techniques described. Topics covered include:

• Business, user, and functional requirements
• The requirements development process
• Identifying user classes and actors
• Scenarios and use cases
• Anatomy of a use case
• Use case diagrams and other analysis models
• Documenting a use case
• Conducting use-case elicitation workshops
• Deriving functional requirements from use cases
• Reviewing use cases
• Using use cases to design test cases

Objectives:

On completion of this seminar, the student will be able to:

• Describe the value of use cases in requirements elicitation.
• Identify use cases for a project.
• Identify and describe actors.
• Lead a use-case elicitation workshop.
• Write use case descriptions at various levels of detail.
• Apply use cases to develop functional requirements and test cases for a software system.

Audience: This course will be useful to requirements analysts, user representatives, software developers, project managers, and anyone else who needs to understand the user requirements for a software system.

Format: Lecture with many group discussions and practice sessions.

I. Software Requirements Overview

A. Introduction to seminar, objectives, participant expectations
B. Classifying different kinds of requirements information
C. Requirements definitions
D. A requirements development process
E. Context diagram
F. Practice session: Drawing a context diagram
G. User classes and actors
H. Practice session: Identifying actors

II. Use Cases: What, Why, and How

A. What use cases are and are not
B. Scenarios and use cases
C. Use-case diagrams
D. A use-case development process
E. Discovering use cases
F. Practice session: Identifying use cases and drawing a use-case diagram
G. Anatomy of a use case
H. Preconditions and postconditions
I. Practice session: Identifying preconditions and postconditions
J. Chaining use cases
K. The normal flow, alternative flows, and exceptions
L. Practice session: Identifying exceptions
M. Writing good use cases
N. Three iterations of use-case development
O. Analysis models and use cases
P. The use-case includes and extends relationships

III. Use-Case Elicitation Workshops

A. The use-case workshop process
B. Facilitating requirements workshops
C. Prioritizing use cases
D. Practice session: Prioritizing use cases
E. Practice session: Writing a detailed use case

IV. From Use Cases to Software

A. Use cases and functional requirements
B. Reviewing use cases
C. Use cases and software testing
D. Practice session: Writing functional requirements
E. Use-case traps to avoid