Use Case Analysis
Since the nineties, use case analysis is one of the most often used methods to start a system or software development off. The use cases describe typical activities of how the user is planning to employ the system. You as an analyst thus take a point of view from the outside of the system and try to determine during which steps of the process the system will be involved. In a second step, you’ll detail which partial activities of these processes the system will support or even accomplish completely independently.
The documentation arrived at by this method is usually understandable even to inexperienced analysts, furthermore it allows for an easy appraisal of whether the functionalities described are comprehensive.
This kind of approach may be applied to either business processes or system processes (or even to individual parts of the system). The object under scrutiny then switches from the entire organization, to the system to individual components defined by architecture.
For documenting use cases of all kinds of granularity, the use case diagram of the UML is an excellent tool. If further levels of refinement need to be described, activity diagrams are the obvious choice. Use case analysis ought not to be regarded as rival to natural language descriptions, rather, it is a elicitation technique and a good tool for structuring requirements thus obtained.
The use cases may be viewed as top-level requirements which are refined through the use of natural language requirements as the process advances.
Support by SOPHIST
We SOPHISTs can support you when employing use case analysis with a gamut of trainings, coaching or even during the operative elicitation and documentation of the use cases. When doing so, we attach great importance to a documentation that is easily understandable by all the involved and to a seamless transition from use case diagrams to activity diagrams to natural language requirements.