Use Cases: Requirements in Context

by Eamonn Guiney and Daryl Kulak

Book Overview

This book describes how to gather and define software requirements using a process based on use cases. It shows systems analysts and designers how use cases can provide solutions to the most challenging requirements issues, resulting in effective, quality systems that meet the needs of users.

Use Cases, Second Edition: Requirements in Context describes a three-step method for establishing requirements--an iterative process...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321154983
• ISBN13: 9780321154989
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Great Book for Use Case driven Requirements Modeling

I saw this book in a stall, while searching for some other book. I had a glance at it and really liked the simplicity and practical approach. Once I bought it and read it completely, I felt happy to find such a great book on Requirements Study. To read and understand this book you need not have a lot of experience or a Requirements Specialist. I feel anyone from Programmer to Project Manager will find this book very useful. The authors teach you in a very practical manner, how to come out with good Use Cases. I enjoyed reading this book, applied the concept in my projects while doing Requirements Study and now can happily recommend this book to others.Three cheers to the authors for a great work.Note: I found Craig Larmen, while talking about Use Cases in his best selling book on UML and Patterns talks highly about this book.

The Best Use Case Book I've Read So Far

Programmers naturally hate use cases. They seem boring, and having seen hundreds of them (written by others and handed to me) over the years, I had lost hope that this practice would ever be of any benefit. I had grown tired of constantly reading varying levels of abstraction and `use-case-itis'. All this, despite the fact that Jacobson's original work and the UDP incorporation of use cases as central to that process was clearly a better way to go than wading through hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages of `shall' statements that accompany most projects (and too often, lead to their failure). Then I read this book. I now use it regularly in every requirements-related class I teach, and I tell every programmer I meet to buy this book. Imagine a use case book that programmers can actually get excited about! This book blazes new territory and its practical insights and humor make it a fun read, as well. Here are the great highlights:1. Properly scoping and relating use cases2. Introducing Business Rules as 'first-class citizens"3. Applying UDP iterations to the use case development process.These last two items make the book stand out. Understanding the importance of business rules as enterprise-wide invariants that span use cases is ground-breaking. The four UDP iterations are ingenious because they can help to enforce the proper level of abstraction, which is a big problem area for use cases. Try it, you'll like it!In addition, the book is loaded with great practical advice and examples of good (and bad!) use case text. And finally, the authors present the most compelling arguments I've ever heard for ditching traditional requirements-gathering methods (which have clearly FAILED), because use cases are, after all, requirements IN CONTEXT (like the title says). If every use case writer read this book and followed it's advice, the software crisis would be dealt a serious blow. Bottom line : If you write use cases (or worse, are forced to implement bad use cases at gunpoint), get this book!

A Great Book

This book, along with Alistair Cockburn's "Writing Effective Use Cases" is one of the best that I have read. It is very practical and very "how"-oriented.

Great book but where's the templates?

This book is very concise and super helpful with it's concrete examples. This is the best book on documenting requirements that I have seen and I have been lokking for quite some time. Sure wish though there was a CD that had Word templates! Seems silly for me to have to create all these from scratch when they are right there in the book. Darn.

Very useful

This is a very practical, example-oriented book. It stands on its own, but is even better as a companion to some of the AWT titles. Highly recommended.