Re: use cases - what are they good for

Subject: Re: use cases - what are they good for
From: "Andrew Brooke" <abrooke -at- mycybernet -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 11:15:49 -0500


Hi Eileen,

Yes - I have used use cases quite a bit to develop documentation. However, I
often find it quite a torturous process, because they are written at such a
low (high?) level, and often have far more detail than you would possible
need. I once wrote a user manual based on about 400 pages of use cases - the
user guide ended up being about 80 pages - the rest of the content from the
use cases was clutter.

Another problem is that use cases often represent what the business analyst
or product manager WANT to see in the application, but may not actually end
up being developed. I can't even rememeber the number of times where in our
"use case review", development will say: "sorry - we can't do that, and
that, and that..." Often the final application ends up being very different.
It shouldn't be that way, but it is. There's really nothing that can replace
actually going through the final UI.

Andrew Brooke
InSystems

"Neumann, Eileen" <ENeuman -at- franklintempleton -dot- ca> wrote in message
news:260959 -at- techwr-l -dot- -dot- -dot-

Hi Tech Whirl,

Does anyone use 'use cases' to develop / write procedures? I've been
investigating this topic, and it seems that use cases are very good for
explaining how various systems and / or people interact. However, I'm
thinking that they are not going to be of use to my type of documentation. I
am writing a user guide for processors in a financial institution -
basically giving them instructions on how to perform various tasks on a
large database. The goal is having easy to understand task based
instructions. The procedure is written from a processor's point of view.

The business recovery division of my company swears by use cases. The
material they produce however is not at all user friendly however, as it's
written at such a high level. They do have different goals and a different
audience than I do.

Use cases are appealing to me in that they give me a standard method of
analyzing procedures, instead of just starting to write and hoping for the
best. However, the results that I have seen aren't at all what we require
for procedures.

I'd like to know anyone's experience with use cases. Are they perhaps suited
to IT only?

Thanks for your help,

Eileen Neumann
Franklin Templeton Investments

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