Talk:Use case

message: The steps under "Basic course of events" are a poor example of a use case. Use cases should be expressed in terms of the goals of the stakeholders.  "Enter password" isn't a goal, it's an implementation detail.  The whole login process is not really a goal; the goal (from the resource owner's POV) is authenticating the user. Logging in with a password is a solution for doing that.74.229.8.169 (talk) 00:15, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Basic course of events 

message: The fact that "software engineering" was (no longer is) written with two inappropriate capital letters makes me suspect that the capital letters in "Use Case" are similarly inappropriate.  Could someone explain? Michael Hardy 19:24, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Capitalization

message: The use case diagrams were moved to a sperate page because a lot of people consider them to be a seperate topic. - JLA
That Use Case diagram is not very appealing to the eyes.  Would anyone have an issue with me updating it with a nicer-looking graphic (same content)? - drosboro
:Please do thats the purpose of a wiki. :ChrisG 09:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diagrams 

message: These are one sentence articles, certainly easy to merge, but I'm not sure if they realy belong here and where. You'll certainly see that with a glance. Nabla 20:51, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The Use-case model should defintely be a seperate article. This article is about the use case which is distinct from UML. The Use Case Model is a artefact in UML and could and should certainly be expanded I've added a link from here and from the UML article. Neither article can really do it full justice because they are summary articles.:ChrisG 17:17, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

text: The Use-case survey is a stage in the stage in the development of use cases; but I haven't added a section on it yet; but again it is a topic in its own right; which could expand substantially. :ChrisG 17:17, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The pages should be moved to Use case survey and Use case model.:ChrisG 15:17, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok. *That* I can do... Merge tags removed, now tagged as Software engineering stubs. Nabla 00:33, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge from [[Use-case survey]] & [[Use-case model]] 

message: I intend to delete the following entries from the section 'Software':
*Altova UModel 2005. Reason for deletion: Is an UML tool. Already listed on List of UML tools.
*Dia: Reason for deletion: Is a 'general-purpose diagram creation software program'. Already listed on List of UML tools.
*Poseidon for UML: Reason for deletion: is an UML tool. Already listed on List of UML tools.
*Rational Rose: Reason for deletion: is an UML tool. Already listed on List of UML tools.
*Umbrello: Reason for deletion: UmrelloUmbrello is a redirect to Umbrello UML Modeller. Is an UML tool. Already listed on List of UML tools.
*Enterprise Architect: Is an UML tool. Already listed on List of UML tools.
*Borland Together: Is an UML tool. Already listed on List of UML tools.
This means, I would delete most of the entries listed. The entries 'Case Complete' and 'eRequirements' would remain. If there are no objections, I'm going to do these deletions.
--Adrian Buehlmann 10:38, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. --Adrian Buehlmann 15:03, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section 'Software': Request for deletion of UML tools from list 

message: I was surprised to see no references to, or more importantly from, similar approaches (eg scenario-based design, personas, etc).  (Ronz 00:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey! This is a wiki. Why don't you add them to the article? You can edit the page :] --Ligulem 09:44, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd prefer someone with more expertise to, but I'm thinking along the lines of Human–computer interaction rather than just software engineering. --Ronz 23:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Refs to less formal but similar approaches? 

message: Alistair Cockburn here: I changed the text from "Detailed" to "Fully Dressed", because that section is quoting my book. Since it is introducing the terminology from the book, it has to do so correctly. The three levels are Brief, Casual, Fully Dressed, and not Brief, Casual, Detailed as was written earlier. You can delete this paragraph as soon as the change gets accepted by whomever wrote the previous version. -- Alistair —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.174.169.204 (talk) 04:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cockburn's Degree of Detail section of the article 

message: This currently reads "...individuals are encouraged to use templates that work for them or the project they are on."  Who is the agent of this passive sentence?  Surely not everyone who wants someone to write use cases for them, right?  My guess is that this has been lifted from some company's guidelines for how to write use cases, and that it expresses that particular company's view.  (That, or it expresses the view of whoever wrote this part of the wikipedia article; but that would be inappropriate.)  The paragraph goes on to say "Standardization within each project is more important than the detail of a specific template."  Again, it reads like some particular company's guidelines.
My suggestion would be to simply omit these two sentences; but I know next to nothing about Use Cases (that's why I came to this page), so I feel like I should leave the decision to someone who knows more about it than I do. Mcswell (talk) 18:53, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use Case Templates section 

message: I restored the History section header and reapplied the pararagraph that was deleted by an anonymous user. If someone disagrees with the history they may edit it, but it is useful to have the section. Secondly I added an Overview header to make the article appear better from a formatting perspective. SunSw0rd 13:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restored History Section Header 

message: Gagan Rana has been added to the history section (not by me, by 194.168.3.18). I did a google search on '"Gagan Rana" use case' and came up with a total of six hits -- and none of them had anything to do with use cases. So who is Gagan Rana and why is this person listed? SunSw0rd 18:12, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Given what else has come from that ip editor, I've removed it.  Most likely it's vandalism like the other recent edits from that editor. --Ronz 18:17, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks. SunSw0rd 20:07, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who is Gagan Rana? 

message: The references at the bottom of the article seem to be using two systems. Additionally, there are references made in the article in the form of "name1 and name2 said ...", without any full citation of the actual source. I'm a bit short on time now, but it seems to me that the references need to be standardized into one format, and the inline references lacking full citations need to be qualified by the people who put them in, or hunted down by someone else and verified. I've added a point to the todo list. -Kieran 07:46, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: "Originally he used the terms usage scenarios and usage case, but found that neither of these terms sounded natural in English, and eventually he settled on the term use case."
This is not correct. According to Jacobson himself the term "use case" is a literal translation of the Swedish term, and at the time he created it he wasn't very fluent in English. He has suggested that the term "usage scenario" is a more correct translation. 
I have the source in print. I will provide it once I have located it (One of the Addison Wesley UML books, but I don't recall which one.) 
----Adam Sroka  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xagile (talk • contribs) 08:58, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the term 

message: There are a few pages, which I do not recognize by their meaning. What is the difference between these topics: User story, Use case and Scenario ? ...thus, what are the reasons these are not merged together?
And once such will be stated, some disambiguation, comparison or summary of the differences would be surely helpful, even for others! ;) Thanks! Franta Oashi (talk) 01:13, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: AFAIK they have different origins, purposes and levels of granularity. But I have no references for a definition or comparison, and they are sometimes used interchangeably anyway.Diego (talk) 08:50, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "used interchangeably anyway" Exactly! That would be a solution for this as well: Not only a disamb, but to merge them together, and explain some possible their "different origins, purposes and levels of granularity" on just one page. Hm, merge these three together would be even better than a fourth disamb page, I like that! ;) --Franta Oashi (talk) 12:18, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd also like to see disambiguation added to these articles - or have them merged in case there is no difference in meaning. --Abdull (talk) 22:06, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

text: These do differ, and they are confused, and I think disambiguation - especially in practical application - would be very useful to a notable audience. --Justapersona (talk) 17:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation: [[User story]], [[Use case]] and [[Scenario (computing)|Scenario]] 

message: http://www.omg.org/docs/formal/07-02-03.pdf reference 2, has gone missing--404.  12.7.248.5 (talk) 02:03, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken reference link 

message: I've always wondered whether the term use case is pronounced with use as English verb (/juz/) or noun (/jus/)... I expected the noun (as in: "a case of its use"), as a common English noun-noun construction, and I asked around with other programmers, and they were unanimous in the noun-noun reading, /jus/.  But it's not entirely self-evident-- a verb-noun compound (/juz/ case) is plausible (cf. "kill switch").  So I'm adding a pronunciation note to the entry.  That may seem odd to some editors, but this is one of those situations where the information is self-apparent, but only once you already know it.  So I judge this to be authentically informative. Now I get to go hunt for where best to put it, and also wrangle Wikipedia's joyous implementation of IPA for English. –Sean M. Burke (talk) 02:28, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: "Use cases should not be confused with the features of the system. One or more features (a.k.a. "system requirements") describe the functionality needed to meet a stakeholder request or user need (a.k.a. "user requirement"). Each feature can be analyzed into one or more use cases, which detail cases where an actor uses the system. Each use case should be traceable to its originating feature, which in turn should be traceable to its originating stakeholder/user request."
-> this is not correct. the correct order and the correct dependencies are:
1.: we identify the actors
2.: we identify the system boundary
3.: we identifiy the user goals (a.k.a. use cases).
4.: we identify the steps of the use cases.
--> 5. this leads to features which a system has to provide to accomplish the use cases' goals!
use cases are a way to develop the requirements of a system.
features are a product of the use case method!
(e.g. compare to cockburn & writing effective use cases).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.97.67.1 (talk) 12:54, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Features & Use Cases 

message: "For some products and systems, use cases are complex to write and to understand, for both end users and developers." It's like saying that one limitation of spanish, or physics, or any discipline, are their difficult to understand by some people. The problem then is the practitioner not the use case concept or artifact. All the section should be rewritten to specify real limitations of use cases as the exclusion of non-functional requirements, the absence of an accepted standard, or the exponential increment of extensions/alternatives with lots of paths and deviations of some cases.
Klodr (talk) 18:20, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Limitations 

message: There are six elements of a use case, right? WHY AREN'T THEY IN THE ARTICLE?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.125.163.223 (talk) 14:40, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, there is a need for simplicity and clarity here. We need to add a description (probably from Cockburn 2001) to define at least one of the ways use cases can be structured. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:42, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where are the six elements of a use case? 

message: I have not objected to recent edits, but the phrase "However, this may not be true" is not necessary and is :WP:WEASEL words: "words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated". 
Look at the paragraph with and then without the sentence.
: Since the inception of the agile movement, the user story technique from Extreme Programming has been so popular that many think it is the only and best solution for agile requirements of all projects. However, this may not be true. Alistair Cockburn lists 5 reasons why he still writes use cases in agile development.
: Since the inception of the agile movement, the user story technique from Extreme Programming has been so popular that many think it is the only and best solution for agile requirements of all projects. Alistair Cockburn lists 5 reasons why he still writes use cases in agile development.
Nothing is lost. I will be making one further change now. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:39, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Throw-away phrase 

message: Typically, the phrase 'use case' has been loostened to become synonymous with any form of application software. Specifically, a single 'use case' is just that; it describes the path followed by a user, usually while using a piece of software, throughout a single example use. It does not describe the application as a whole. Any single application will typically offer many, if not many hundreds, of different individual possible use cases. Taking for example a simple appliction such as a Cash Machine, even such a simple machine will offer many, and probably many dozens, of seperate use cases. If you track the usage of a cash machine by one hundred people, then each interaction with the machine by each individual person offers a single example use case. Vapourmile (talk) 15:57, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  May we please ensure restricting usage to the strict definition of a 'use case' throughout Wikipedia 

message: The article Scenario (computing) Does not provide any enough coherent or additional information to merit a seperate article. Ethanpet113 (talk) 00:04, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge of [[Scenario (computing)]] into [[Use case]] 

message: The phrase is commonly used far too lazily and liberally. The most common example is incorrectly replacing the word "application" with the phrase "use-case".
I encountered this incorrect use in a blog post today:
"I’m pretty sure that the majority of current use of '--no-binary' is focused on the “I don’t want to download pre-built binaries, I want to install everything from source” use case"
That isn't an example of a use-case, if anything it's an example of a personality or Agile persona. A use-case is just a single example of somebody operating a system. An entire computer application is not a single use-case. A general attitude towards software isn't a use-case, it's a persona or personality. An example of a use-case would be somebody using an auto-teller machine to see their bank balance. Another example of a different use-case is somebody using that same auto-teller machine to withdraw money. A use-case is a single example of a use of a system. For any system, of even small sophistication, a pocket calculator for example, there are many different possible examples of use-cases. A Word Processor is not a use-case, it's a computer application. Vapourmile (talk) 11:47, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it might be confusing if there would be a long list of what a use-case is not. This article is dedicated to a specific technique/practice in the area of software engineering and system engineering.  It was already extended to business modelling by Jacobson  himself in his book "The object advantage".  But the term is also used in other areas especially in product management and business analysis where use-case means "when to use this product" or "the situation when the product is used".  I'd propose to add a section "Variants and related concepts", like in the French version of this article,  in which we could clarify that "use case" is sometimes used with a different meaning, and also move all the explanations about differences with scenarios, user stories,  etc... --Christophe (talk) 14:10, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  We define what notable subjects are, and we do not try to list all the things that they are not. Walter Görlitz (talk) 03:44, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recommend: Highlighting example cases of when "use-case" has been incorrectly used.