All Entries Tagged With: "user requirements"

Weekly Digest – 8-17

Requirements for ERP projects, Waterfall as a criminal offense, and what developers want from BA’s.

A Couple Tips on Keeping Use Cases Simple

Use cases are atomic functions that are portable and not dependent upon a certain situation. They are requirement “objects” in the “object oriented” sense. I think that modularity and “reusability” are among the most valuable aspects of using use cases to express requirements.

This modularity can be undermined, though, if we allow our use cases to get too far into specifics and implementation detail.

The book “Use Cases: Requirements in Context”, by Kulak and Guiney, provides us with a couple simple ways to self-check our use cases to ensure that they include the appropriate level of detail, but aren’t reaching too far into design.

Economist Sowell on… Usability!

I love reading Thomas Sowell’s articles on economics and its social and political ramifications. His “Basic Economics” book broke down the basics of supply and demand as well as other economic principles in a way even I could understand! Today, however, his article was a rant on how hard today’s electronic gadgets are to use.

JB Weekly Digest (07-45)

Building rapport, requirement structure, use case disgruntlement, and RASCI.

What are user stories, and why should I use them?

I have used user stories – or at least something similar – to help me identify user requirements, but have never used them as the means of documenting requirements. I am somewhat familiar with the concept, though, and have been interested in learning more.

I found a great deal of help in Mike Cohn’s article, Advantages of User Stories for Requirements. In this article, Cohn explains user stories and the advantages of using them over traditional, natural language requirements and use cases.

UML Use Case Modeling – A Little Help?

Welcome to Practical Analyst, a site specializing in practical insight for business analysts and project professionals. If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for stopping by! Recently, I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in some very interesting training sessions relating to business process [...]

Excellent Use Case Primer

If you’re new to use case modelling, or just need a refresher, here is an excellent resource; the UML Use Case Diagrams: Tips and FAQ.