• 29 Nov 12
  

  Darrell Pierce

  task analysis Use Cases

  • An especially useful technique to consider is use cases. Use cases provide a simple, fast means to decide and describe the purpose of a project.

  • So, just what is a use case? 

     

     To define a project’s use cases, we need to consider two concepts, and how they relate:
  • • he actors
     
    • the goals
  • Actors are everyone and everything that will use (or be used) by our new website
  • Goals are what one, some, or all of the actors want to achieve.
  • To be complete, every use case must describe a specific goal and the actors that will perform tasks to achieve that goal.
  • The actors are external to our site — we can’t create or directly control them — but they do perform roles to achieve its goals
  • The most obvious actor in the case of any website is a visitor to the site. Perhaps their goal is to buy one of our thingamajigs or to check an account balance, book an appointment, download software, or simply absorb content that interests them.
  • Actors are not necessarily human; perhaps we are developing syndication system to deliver information to many subscriber-sites. In this case, the remote consumer-servers are actors.

  • Whatever our vision, use cases will describe the goals achieved by actors who perform tasks. 

      
  • A weblog enables its owners to communicate thoughts about a topic and others to read them and perhaps respond.
  • The obvious weblog actors are the authors and the visitors to the web log
  • The author plays the role of generating the content and the visitor plays the role of reading the content and responding. The goals are to inform and to be informed.
  • Use-case diagrams make it easier to think about the relationships, or dependencies, between use cases and actors.
  • Both visitors and authors want to be able to search. Furthermore, it’s not possible to search for content that hasn’t yet been published. The “Search Content” use case is therefore dependant upon “Publish Weblog”.
  • We’ve decided to employ Google for our searching function. Google becomes an actor and the “Search Content” use case is dependent upon Google. Google’s task as an actor is to deliver search results.

  14 more annotations...

• 27 Oct 12
  

  Pamela Flanagan
  • One of the biggest problems in delivering a website, and yet probably the least talked and written about, is how to decide, specify, and communicate just what, exactly, is it that we’re going to build, and why. What problem are we solving? Who needs it? What’s this site for, anyway?
  • An especially useful technique to consider is use cases. Use cases provide a simple, fast means to decide and describe the purpose of a project. They’re successfully employed by many software engineers as a way to capture the high-level objectives of an application during the initial phase of development.

  • To define a project’s use cases, we need to consider two concepts, and how they relate: 

     
     
    • the actors
     
    • the goals
  • Actors are everyone and everything that will use (or be used) by our new website. Goals are what one, some, or all of the actors want to achieve. To be complete, every use case must describe a specific goal and the actors that will perform tasks to achieve that goal.
  • The actors are external to our site — we can’t create or directly control them — but they do perform roles to achieve its goals. The most obvious actor in the case of any website is a visitor to the site.

  • Instead, use cases define goals and purpose: the problems we are trying to solve. Establishing these goals lays the foundation for the scope that will follow. Additionally: 

     
     
    • If we simply consider the roles played by the actors and their goals, the use-case model can very rapidly emerge.
     
    • Use-case diagrams can distill a complex project into a more easily comprehensible picture.
     
    • A well-constructed use-case model can be understood by all the stakeholders in a project: developers, managers and clients. It’s a powerful aid to collaborative development.
     
    • Use cases ensure that scope is under control from the outset. The identification of use cases and their dependencies makes it easy to distinguish between core goals that must be satisfied and subsidiary enhancements that may be postponed as. Scoping in this manner allows for better planning and prioritization.
     
    • It’s an implementation-neutral picture of a project. No assumptions about tools and technologies are made, nor should they be.
     
    • It’s transportable. No special tools are required — sticky notes, a whiteboard, pencil and paper, or your favorite graphics application can all be used to document your vision.
     
     

  4 more annotations...

• 29 Jun 12
  

  Jiney C
  • January 25, 2005

       

    What’s the Problem?

     

      by Norm Carr,   Tim Meehan
• 04 Jun 12
  

  jgreene331

  Utilizing "use cases" to make sure a website design stays focused and provides the target market with the type of experience they're looking for.

  use cases

  • Poor understanding of target user needs or our client’s vision, ineffective use of limited resources, misguided emphasis on the wrong design priorities, over-emphasis on pet technologies — all will contribute to a failed, late, inappropriate or too-expensive website.
  • Use cases provide a simple, fast means to decide and describe the purpose of a project.

  • To define a project’s use cases, we need to consider two concepts, and how they relate: 

     
     
    • the actors
     
    • the goals
     
     

     Actors are everyone and everything that will use (or be used) by our new website. Goals are what one, some, or all of the actors want to achieve. To be complete, every use case must describe a specific goal and the actors that will perform tasks to achieve that goal.
  • The purpose of describing use cases is emphatically not to fully specify the exact nature of what a new site will contain and how it is to be built. Instead, use cases define goals and purpose: the problems we are trying to solve. Establishing these goals lays the foundation for the scope that will follow.

  2 more annotations...

• 04 Jan 11
  

  Charlotta Beavers

  webdev_personas

• 02 Mar 05
  

  Andrew Demack

  Useful article on use cases to define scope of a site

  use case webdev site planning

Would you like to comment?

Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.