THE IMPORTANCE OF USE CASES
I have written software for the Internet and for desk-tops going on 7 years now, and I have never once had a single user, a manager, or even a small cross-section of both be able to define an application without some form of use case. Everyone wants something a little different, a different feature, a different expectation of the returned data. Until the users of the application come together in some formal meeting of the minds and really write out how they expect the application to work, the work will never get started properly. If it does get off the ground at all, the amount of change in later stages of development will be staggering.
Without defining the cases necessary to cover all of the users expectations, the application will not cover the needs of the user. The problem will not be solved, its as simple as that. From a developers point of view, I have tried to interpret and guess user needs in the past, and have failed on every single occasion. Only the users of the application, the actual customer, knows the scope of the problem, and what they need to fix it. The way this is translated to developers is through use cases, or user stories in the case of eXtreme Programming.
Convincing users and customers to try Use Cases can be a hard sell. The best way that I have found is by simply sitting down with as many as I could and explaining the process. Use cases make sense, once the customer has an understanding of the need. Simply by explaining that the development team will not be able to accomplish the goals that the users are requiring has been enough (in my experience) to get the user to focus on the problem statement. Once the focus is there, training can begin.
Once again, going by past experience, training the user to write a use case can be difficult if you try to make it a formal affair. I have sat down and shown users UML diagrams and old use case diagrams many times, but I have found the most effective way to get the juices flowing is to simply ask questions, and then ask the same questions a different way. The most successful projects I have been on in the past are ones where I could simply go and talk to the user of the application and find out what their expectations were. In that scenario, the use case becomes an informal tool that the user doesn''t have to learn about, they are just explaining their needs and giving insight into how to address them.
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