Tutorials -- Half Day/Tuesday AM

Use Cases describe a software system from an external usage perspective. There is an art to writing them clearly. Written carefully, use cases convey key usage requirements and can be tied to other requirements. Written poorly, use cases are confusing and ambiguous. This tutorial presents examples of both good and bad Use Case descriptions drawn from real projects, and practical techniques for writing three forms of use case descriptions. We begin with brief textual descriptions written from an external perspective. We elaborate these high-level usage descriptions, choosing either a scenario form, which emphasizes sequence, or a conversation, which highlights interactions between a user and the system. Tips for describing policies, errors and exceptions, and glossary entries are also presented. This is a hands-on tutorial. Attendees will practice writing, critically reading and revising usage descriptions.

Participants will be able to apply principles and writing techniques to their own projects, writing appropriate usage descriptions.

Attendee Background: Students should be familiar with writing and reading informal software requirements and usage descriptions. Since Use Cases are part of the Unified Modeling Language (UML), students could benefit from an introduction to object concepts. However, an object background is not a pre-requisite!

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock is president of Wirfs-Brock Associates, a firm specializing in the transfer of object analysis and design expertise to organizations and individuals through training, mentoring, and consulting. She spent 17 years as a Software Engineer at Tektronix, leading Tek's development of Color Smalltalk. She has lectured and presented tutorials on object analysis, design and management topics, and has been an innovator in object technology since 1984. Rebecca is co-inventor of the Responsibility-Driven Design method and co-author of the classic, "Designing Object-Oriented Software."

Alan McKean, Vice President of Training at Wirfs-Brock Associates, has devoted his career applying principles of design and adult learning to find better ways to communicate technical information. A student of Buckminster Fuller's and an MSCS graduate of the University of Oregon, he specializes in system architecture and design. An experienced speaker and software developer, he has developed core curricula in object-oriented development and distributed object systems.