Brilliance of Use Cases

Use Cases in whatever form are probably the single most wide-spread and effective requirements gathering tool for one really simple reason:

 

They close the gap between narrative requirements on one side, and a specified design on the other.

 

It really doesn’t matter what you’re calling requirements and what you’re calling design (No matter what you call design I’ll find someone who’ll call it requirements). You can always use some form of use cases to close the gap between the narratives that the consumer of the deliverable experiences and a specification of how the deliverable will provide that experience and respond to inputs. Whether it’s a user story, business use case, API use case, or anything else; use cases close this gap like nothing else.

 

In my experience they’re the one deliverable that’s as useful for users and developers if done right. There may be other deliverables more suitable for specific project, or better for some stakeholder group, but you can’t go too far wrong starting off with use cases.

 

In a way they’re the quintessential BA artefact. They’re a Rosetta stone that talks to both the users, and the deliverers in their own language.

 

P.S. Yes  - I know it’s pretty useless to talk about Use Cases.  Let’s just assume I mean the term as a generic catch-all term for everything a reasonable person could call a use cases. I should be a post one day about my two dimensional model for describing the different sorts of Use Case.

 

P.P.S. I have strong opinions about BABOK vs IESB. How geeky am I?