Working Effectively with Use Cases October 31, 2007

Working Effectively With Use Cases
Intro
3Back has created a course with many ideas pulled from the Jolt Award winning book "Writing Effective Use Cases" written in 1999-2000. This course reflects the current and progressive thinking on use case writing. Some of these current thoughts are

we unfold use cases as needed through increased levels of detail,
use cases are open ended and therefore too big for driving development efficiently,
use cases can be an effective way to wrestle with analyzing complex domains while not getting trapped into premature commitment for building product
use cases can provide a tight mapping of requirements being considered to those actually being built
The art of use case writing has evolved and will continue to evolve. For those people working in complex business domains, use cases are an essential technique for navigating the shifting delta of requirements. Simply, writing a good use case by holding to form is insufficient for making use of the information that we uncover when we explore product development ideas.

We have published a manual and based our course on our evolved thoughts for “Effectively Managing Analysis Effort”. We choose the name of this course to emphasize that it is not about just an effective writing technique but, rather it is about working effectively as we validate our product while not getting lost in the shifting delta of detail.

Level
Beginner to Intermediate, all job titles.



Included with the course cost, each participant will receive a white paper, “Effectively Managing Analysis Effort,” (a $75 value) which reflects the current state of thinking in use case writing.

Instructors
Each instructor is a senior designer and consultant who has written use cases professionally on the job and has been working in the field for years. Besides being experts on Working Effectively with use cases, our instructors are not "slide turners," and can provide references on request.

Course flow
The course will move between a mix of instruction and applied exercises that involve talking, writing and reviewing in small groups. We have seen repeated success in small group activities and we favor a style of 5-6 people at small tables so that they can each participate and make observations. We will write use cases in good form, understand unfolding information and how we focus our energy on the importance of validating in priority order, pieces the software system we are exploring.

Those people who will benefit
Product Owner, Business Analyst, Software Analyst, Test, QA, Testers, ScrumMaster, Process Advocate, Project Manager and anyone else involved in product development, especially software product development. Sometimes these roles are categorized by responsibilities such as requirements capture, design, gathering, refining, business decomposition, requirements trace or development. In summary, those who require strong skills in systematizing complex logic, communicating and building products.

Purpose for Attendees
Understand and note what a use case is for, how to write one. Understand how to unfold a use case, and when to unfold a given piece. Understand that managing our energy and work with use cases has a tremendous impact on our product development effort. Highlight the critical thinking skills that mark the difference between those that succeed and those that flounder.

How to write clear manageable use cases that unfold information as needed. We will do this by reviewing common pitfalls, writing and working through some examples. Many of the concepts pull from Writing Effective Use Cases but, will include an emphasis on just-in-time agile unfolding.

This Course Covers
What a great use case looks like
How and when to unfold stories from a use case
Creating sharp definitions of “done” for all the work we do
How and when to validate the “right product”
Why avoiding and eliminating waste is tightly coupled to an agile analysis
Why the success of our products is strongly influenced by our analysis
The importance of involved prioritization to maintain focus
Daily retrospection to pull out key concepts and lessons learned
Course Length
2 days

www.3back.com and www.casecomplete.com

Official Website: http://effective-use-cases.eventbrite.com/