Re: use cases - what are they good for

[David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Tony,

There is another case entirely...the tech writer who has a long and
intimate familiarity with the business. The knowledge may have come
from working in that business for an extended time...and the "use
cases" are simply understood through that experience rather from any
formal methodology.

Further, if you have acquired such a detailed knowledge it may not be
necessary for *any* kind of model to be used.

Models of all sorts are primarily aids in "getting out arms around" a
business--to understand it and its workings in a convenient way that
is least likely to leave anything out.

I have seen some fairly ridiculous instances of use case
methodology...as well as data flow diagrams that have been royally
screwed up. "Any tool is only as good as its user" is probably the
best maxim in these cases.

Finally, it is not an "either/or" choice between use cases and data
flow diagrams in all cases. I have worked in many assignments in which
the entire existing process set had to be re-engineered. It was
helpful in these instances to start with a set of use cases, getting
an idea in broad terms of the functions that the user community
performed. Moving from that, a data map of existing database
organization and a data flow diagram that showed what was the existing
state and what was the desired state were quite helpful in developing
both the structure and the means to transition from the old to the
new.

Once these information maps were copleted, we then checked our design
against the desired use cases to be sure we "had it nailed" before the
serious coding began.

You may certainly choose another method...but in the primary example I
am thinking of, the users easily understood the use cases but were
less comfortable with data flow. In fact, data flow is often
interpreted by *users* as "the way things ought to be" simply because
that is what they are used to.

Frankly, your injection of data flow diagramming into so many contexts
seems rather forced. I do hope you are not a sort of "one trick pony"
on the subject...

Cordially,

David


On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 10:47:09 -0800 (PST), Tony Markos
<ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> 
> While I disagree with you about the value of Use Cases
> - as any true Data Flow Diagrammer would, at a higher
> level, you bring up a very important point: The
> importance of modeling.  The human mind can not
> understand the workings of any but the most trivial
> systems without the aid of models.
> 
> Tony Markos

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