Writing Agile Use Cases

2 days

Ideal class size is 20 students or less. Price: Contact us at training@wirfs-broc. dot com. Price includes all course materials and texts. Instructor travel and lodging are extra.

Use cases describe a software system from an external usage perspective. When teams adopt agile development they try to “right size” the requirements they write. They favor direct collaboration and communications over dense documentation that is rarely read or poorly understood. So where exactly do written use case descriptions fit into an agile project? While we don't suggest writing complex descriptions when direct conversations or simples sketches could get the idea across, we often see the value of a business analyst or user experience designer writing concise, and vivid usage descriptions and developing wizard-of-Oz prototypes and acceptance tests.

This course is a hands-on exposure to techniques for effectively writing use cases and focusing on usability in an agile development environment. It also goes the extra step of showing how use cases relate to feature definition, user stories and test cases-putting Use Cases in context for teams following agile development practices. During the course, students have opportunity to practice writing different forms and experimenting with different writing styles and techniques and ways of expressing complex ideas more clearly.


Course Objectives

The goal of this short course is to enable you to:

• Effectively write use cases in an agile development environment
• “Tune” and lighten your use case template to meet project specific needs
• Break a use case into user stories and know how to incrementally plan and track their implementation
• Incrementally write use cases-adding details when they matter
• Develop acceptance tests for use cases
• Write use case descriptions at appropriate levels of detail
• Develop wizard-of-OZ prototypes and use low-fidelity usability techniques
• Efficiently relate use cases to business policies, UI prototypes, and other requirements
   

Course Topics

• A quick use case refresher-what use cases are and common ways to write them
• What is an agile use case
• User stories and how they relate to use cases
• How use cases relate to scenarios and user types or personas
• How to develop low-tech user interface prototypes and test them with your users
• Tactics for incremental use case development
• Organizing and staging features and their use cases
• When use cases add value and when they don't
• Deconstructing a use case template
• Reconstructing a use case template with just enough information
• Writing details without creating clutter
• Tips for clear, simple writing
• Going the extra mile-defining acceptance criteria
• Relating use cases to business rules and details that developers and testers may need
• Simple ways to describe error conditions and handling
• Breaking a use case into user stories and staging its development
• Tracking the completion of a use case

Prerequisites
Attendees should have some familiarity with use cases as well as agile development methodologies.

Audience
Who should attend?

• Analysts, product owners, or developers who want to know how to describe usage and write agile use cases
• Any one who writes, reads or reviews software usage requirements: technical writers, software product marketers, business analysts, developers, and end users
• Software evaluators and testers, including quality assurance professionals
• Agile teams who want to collaboratively develop user-centered software

Course Information
Approximately 70% of the time is spent doing and reviewing short exercises; 30% in short lectures. Each student receives a copy of:
An Agile Use Case Style Guide developed by Wirfs-Brock Associates that includes guidelines, explanatory text, examples, and advice.

For additional information, please contact us at training@wirfs-brock.com