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Writing Effective Use Cases Alistair Cockburn
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

A use case needs “stuff” behind it to describe it. A use case diagram is a behavior diagram, so each use case needs its behavior described. The use case analysis for SPIN will be based on Alistair Cockburn's book "Writing Effective Use Cases". Have addressed in your papers and have even bought your book (Applying Use Cases – 2nd Edition, A Practical Guide) and books on the topic by other authors, such as Alistair Cockburn's “Writing Effective Use Cases”. Use cases have never been this easy to understand -- or this easy to create! He early on describes a couple of ways to write use cases. In the past, I have produced use cases – in their written form – to specify detailed system functionality (taking my guidance from Cockburn's Writing Effective Use Cases). I began the journey of use cases through Alistair Cockburn book today and one thing hit me right away. Writing use cases as a means of capturing the behavioral requirements of software systems and business processes is a practice that is quickly gaining popularity. I just read a recent blog (wiki) entry by Alistair Cockburn (of "writing effective use cases" fame) called "why I still use use cases". In order for use cases to provide value to any Project, agile or not, they need to be written properly. A nice reference sheet can be found at Alistair's website. Below is a use case based on his “Casual Use Case” structure. Alistair Cockburn, an expert on use cases describes in “Writing Effective Use Cases” (2001) that a “fully dressed” use case is not always appropriate.