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To promote consistency in the contributed content, please read these style and composition notes for use cases. Thank you.

The guidance here is from the book Writing Effective Use Cases by Alistair Cockburn.

The use case style is oriented to text descriptions of how the system behaves with respect to a list of Actors.

The book has a list of reminders for writers:

  1. A use case is a prose essay
  2. Make the use case easy to read
  3. Sentences should be present tense; with an active verb in active voice; describing an actor successfully achieving a goal that moves the process forward.
  4. Incude sub-use cases where they make sense
  5. Each sentence must have an actor acting
  6. Get the goal level right - the use cases should have no more than 10 steps in them
  7. Keep the GUI out of the use case
  8. Each use case should describe the successful ending and the failure ending
  9. Stakeholders (of which the primary actor is one) have expectations that must be met by the system

The book recommends the following order when writing:

NOTE: We expect to collect existing use case documents whenever possible rather than directly analysing organization processes, so this list can be viewed as an analysis appraoch when translating the contributions into a common style.

  • Step 1: Find the boundaries of the system (Context diagram, In/out list).
  • Step 2: Brainstorm and list the primary actors. (Actor List) 
  • Step 3: Brainstorm and list the primary actors' goals against the system. (Actor-Goal List) 
  • Step 4: Write the outermost summary level use cases covering all the above. 
  • Step 5: Reconsider & revise the strategic use cases. Add, subtract, merge goals. 
  • Step 6: Pick a use case to expand or write a narrative to get acquainted with the material. 
  • Step 7: Fill in the stakeholders, interests, preconditions and guarantees. Double check them. 
  • Step 8: Write the main success scenario. Check it against the interests and the guarantees. 
  • Step 9: Brainstorm and list possible failure conditions and alternate success conditions. 
  • Step 10: Write how the actors and system should behave in each extension. 
  • Step 11: Break out any sub use case that needs its own space. 
  • Step 12: Start from the top and readjust the use cases. Add, subtract, merge. Double check for completeness, readability, failure conditions.


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