Course Overview

Writing Effective, Testable Use Cases

Many organisations now employ use cases to describe business and system requirements. However, there is often confusion about when they should be used, what writing style should be adopted and how supporting use case diagrams should be structured. This course focuses on use cases from their initial identification through (where required) to their fully described (fully-dressed) state. Participants explore different writing styles at varying levels of precision.

The relationship of use case descriptions to testing is also considered and the use of an activity diagram to graphically represent a use case description is explored as a way of defining test cases and test coverage. The eventual realisation of use cases in sequence diagrams is also discussed.

The partitioning of descriptions, necessary to avoid monolithic use cases, is achieved through correct use of the <<include>> and <<extend>> structures. Thus appropriate use case diagrams, again at varying levels of representation, are also developed throughout the course.

The course is exercise-based, culminating in a significant case study where participants convert unstructured textual requirements into a set of either system or business use cases.

Course Content

1. Context of use cases
   • The Unified Modeling Language
   • The Unified Process
   • The Requirements Workflow
2. Use cases
   • Requirements classification and its relationship to use cases
   • Use case diagrams; actors, boundaries and initial use cases
   • Use case specifications - template
   • Use case specifications - style and content
   • Use case diagrams revisited - <<include>> and <<extend>>
   • Alternative use case styles and structure
   • The life cycle of a use case and a use case diagram
3. Use cases and activity diagrams
   • Diagramming use cases - the activity diagram
   • Defining test conditions, test cases and test scripts from activity diagram
   • The relationship of use cases to MoSCoW
   • Use case scenarios and agile system development
   • Use case realisation - an introduction to sequence diagrams