Book excerpt: "Establishing the Vision" (Chapter 3) and "The Life Cycle of a Use Case" (Chapter 6)

Kurt Bittner, Communities of Practice Architect, IBM

Kurt Bittner is Rational's director of requirements management solutions. He brings to this job 20 years of experience in product management, consulting, management of software start-ups, and what is now described as "extreme programming." He also lays claim to six years of hard duty in the "RDBMS/ODBMS database wars" of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He holds a B.S. in finance from the University of Illinois.

Ian Spence, Technical Team Lead, IBM

As Technical Team Lead for Rational UK's Process and Project Management Team, Ian Spence specializes in the adoption, implementation, and configuration of the Rational Unified Process (RUP). In addition to working with the process for more than five years, instantiating it in companies both large and small, Ian has made several contributions to the process itself, completing two secondments to the RUP Business Unit. Currently he is working on a Rational Process Plug-In that addresses program management issues. Prior to joining Rational, he spent twelve years working in the financial sector, including eight as an OO specialist and architect. He holds a degree in Control Systems and Computing Science from Sheffield University in the United Kingdom.

Summary: from The Rational Edge: Book excerpt -- these sample chapters introduce basic concepts and methods for developing use case models, including identifying the business problem, stakeholders, and proper system function, as well as delving into the finer details of working with use cases.

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Date: 15 Jul 2002
Level: Intermediate
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from Use-Case Modeling by Kurt Bittner and Ian Spence (forthcoming; available from Addison-Wesley August 23, 2002).

Intended to be a ready reference for the practitioner -- the person who is actually grappling with the unique challenges of working with use cases -- this new book from Rational authors Bittner and Spence focuses on basic techniques, methods, and tools for using use cases effectively. The topics and discussions draw heavily upon lessons learned over the many years these two professionals have devoted to helping countless project teams work their way through use-case development issues.

Chapter 3, "Establishing the Vision," is a pivotal chapter in Part I, which introduces basic concepts and methods. It concentrates on ensuring that you will define the right solution when you develop a use-case model by presenting proven techniques for identifying the business problem you are solving, identifying stakeholders for the solution, and deciding what the system should do for those stakeholders to solve the business problem. Chapter 6, "The Life Cycle of a Use Case," is from Part II, which delves into finer details of working with use cases. It describes the transformations a use case undergoes as it evolves from concept to complete description. This chapter establishes context for the remaining chapters and also places the content from the first part of the book into a larger context.

* Both chapters posted in their entirety by permission from Addison-Wesley.

For a review of Use-Case Modeling, visit our Rational Reader section in this month's issue.

Chapter 3 pdf file (637 K) and Intro to Part II / Chapter 6 pdf file (328 K)

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