Use Case View  «Prev  Next»
Lesson 1

UML Use Case View

Every development effort must determine what users are expecting to receive, yet every organization, even groups within organizations, has its own ideas about what makes a good requirements document.

Identifying Requirements

Many different kinds of requirements affect the course of a development project. Financial and time constraints, policy, technology, existing systems, and even staff can affect project processes and solutions. The first challenge in a development project is to identify the types of requirements that most directly influence the analysis and design effort.

Use Case View

The use case view is focused on the critical success factors of the application to be developed and its functionality or features. By focusing on the application's features, we create a set of conceptual "slots" into which all the widely varied requirements can be placed.

Focus on Features

Features can be tested, modeled, designed, and implemented. Users who require a particular feature become the audience for modeling activities. By focusing on features, we define the scope of the project; what features will and will not be supported by the final solution; or the list of features that will be implemented in each incremental release.

Module objectives

After completing this module, you will be able to:
  1. Define the components of the use case model
  2. Model a use case diagram using actors, use cases, systems, and associations
  3. Build a use case
  4. Write a use case narrative
  5. Find use case scenarios
A use case is a methodology used in system analysis to identify, clarify and organize system requirements . The use case is made up of a set of possible sequences of interactions between systems and users in a particular environment and related to a particular goal. The method creates a document that describes all the steps taken by a user to complete an activity. Use cases are typically written by business analysts and can be employed during several stages of software development, such as planning system requirements, validating design, testing software and creating an outline for online help and user manuals. A use case document can help the development team identify and understand where errors may occur during a transaction so they can resolve them.
In the next lesson, the use case model will be discussed.

UML Distilled