Writing Effective Use Case Course

Course design: Alistair Cockburn

This course provides both the theory and practice of using use cases to define the functional requirements of software systems.

Our consulting work has shown that many people are happy with the basic concepts, but find it difficult to apply use cases in practice. This course is based on experiences gained from working on real projects. It is a highly practical course; most of the time is spent writing and discussing use cases.

Audience: Anyone who is faced with gathering the requirements for a software system. Typically from an IT department, but possibly from the human factors group, marketing department, or from a user community.
Duration: 2 Days.
Course Level: Beginner to Intermediate.
Location: Taught on location, by request.
Cost: £5,500 plus travel for the first 10 people.
£180 for each additional person.

Course cost includes a copy of the Jolt Productivity Award - winning book Writing Effective Use Cases.
Class size: 16 - 24 people.
Contact: Andy Pols via email at andy@pols.co.uk, or phone on +44 (0)7769 904930.
Outcomes: Attendies will learn the following:

  • What is a use case? What does one look like? How are multiple use cases organised?
  • How do use cases fit into the overall requirements process? Don’t believe people who tell you that use cases represent the whole requirements!
  • The steps involved in writing use cases.
  • How to discover the system boundaries.
  • How to write use cases based on stakeholder requirements (stakeholder goals).
  • Establishing the scope and level of use cases.
  • How to write a simple scenerio of usage.
  • How to specify exceptional and failure situations. Identifying the failure conditions early on in the project lifecycle is one of the key benefits of the use case approach.
  • How to link use cases together.
  • How to structure use cases for large systems.
  • Use cases and the UML standard.
  • Common mistakes, subtle mistakes, mistakes with UML.
  • Templates and tools for use cases.
  • Making use cases easier to read.
  • Alternative writing styles, alternative formats, alternative tools.
Room Setup: The ideal setup is with chairs grouped around tables (in groups of 4/5) with each table having their own flip chart. The course is a powerpoint-free-zone, so no projection facilities are required.

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