Writing Effective Use Cases (Crystal Series for Software Development)

• A practical methodology that makes use cases more accessible than ever before.
• Project standards, formats, style, and detailed "do's and don'ts" for creating use cases that work.
• Based on Cockburn's acclaimed tutorials at OOPSLA and Software Development Conferences!

Use cases have never been this easy to understand -- or this easy to create! In Writing Effective Use Cases, Alistair Cockburn offers a hands-on, soup-to-nuts guide to use case development, based on the proven concepts he has refined through years of research, development, and seminar presentations. Cockburn begins by answering the most basic questions facing anyone interested in use cases: "What does a use case look like? When do I write one?" Next, he introduces each key element of use cases: actors, stakeholders, design scope, goal levels, scenarios, and more. Writing Effective Use Cases contains detailed guidelines, formats, and project standards for creating use cases -- as well as a detailed chapter on style, containing specific do's and don'ts. Cockburn shows how use cases fit together with requirements gathering, business processing reengineering, and other key issues facing software professionals. The book includes practice exercises with solutions, as well as a detailed appendix on how to use these techniques with UML. For all application developers, object technology practitioners, software system designers, architects, and analysts.

Alistair Cockburn is Consulting Fellow at Humans and Technology, where he is responsible for helping clients succeed with object-oriented projects. He has more than 20 years experience leading hardware, software, and research projects for companies such as IBM, Ralston Purina, GE Capital Venture, and Traveler's Insurance. Cockburn is author of Surviving Object-Oriented Projects (Addison-Wesley 1998).