Organizing and managing use cases

Abstract

The UML recommends that software system functionality and interactions be documented through use case narrative descriptions and use case diagrams. The UML, however, provides no structure or framework for organizing a large number of use cases that may be required for complex systems. In this paper, we present various taxonomies of existing use case classification schemes and one additional scheme for classifying and organizing use cases. We then discuss how we can effectively understand categorized use cases in terms of project priority and personnel skills to achieve the best possible allocation of project resources to use case-driven development efforts. The proposed method uses simple sequential questions to determine use case categories to aid analyzers in real-world projects. Our method is moderately simple to understand and implement. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.