Course Duration: 3 Days
Course Fee: $1,595

Instructor Led, Facilitated Workshop
PDU Credits:  21 for eligible PMP's

Course Overview
If you’ve ever been involved in a project involving use cases, you’ve probably encountered come confusion about what should be in a use case, and how use cases should be used.  In developing business-oriented systems, the success of the project will be measured by its usefulness after the system is in use by business domain specialists and end users. Because of this, the specification of requirements in projects needs to be done from the perspective of a user. User-centered analysis places the focus where it belongs - with the user. Whether the user is considered a business decision maker or hands-on operator,

Use Cases can make an effective tool for the Business Analyst while gathering and defining requirements from the user perspective.Use cases that meet the needs of designers can be too technical and too detailed for other stakeholders.  Use cases that satisfy business users are usually not very helpful to designers and testers.  How do you satisfy these two disparate interests?  And how do you handle the details like business rules, data validations and user interface specifications?  This Use Case Workshop will help you to clear up and manage the confusion.

Key Benefits

At the end of this course, you will understand how to

• Employ use cases to elicit requirements, at a business, system or subsystem level
• Employ use cases to document the scope of a project
• Write use cases in a clear and unambiguous way.
• Model use cases with workflow diagrams
• Plan and divide up the project work based on your use cases
• Derive test cases from use cases
• Manage a use case as it evolves over time and goes through many changes
• This course is endorsed by IIBA™

Who Should Attend

This course has been expressly formulated for the Business Analyst, System Analyst, and/or Requirements Engineer.  However, anyone involved with requirements gathering are welcome to attend

Prerequisites
Before taking this course, participants should have acquired the background as taught in the course Essential Skills of the Business Analyst. Understanding how to conduct a Stakeholder Analysis is an example of pre-requisite knowledge.

Recommended Follow-On Courses

• Object Oriented Analysis
• Modeling Business Requirements using UML

Course Overview

• Purpose and value of a Use Case approach
• Use case terminology
• Understanding the requirement levels (Business vs. System)
• A Use Case Approach

• Describe the key elements of a Business Architecture Framework
• Utilize a Context Diagram to define the scope of the business organization
• Identify business actors
• Analyze the future state Business Process Model to identify candidate business
       use cases
• Case Study Exercise: Identify Business Actors and draw a Business Context Diagram

• Case Study Exercise:  Draw a Business Use Case Diagram
• Write the Business Use Case Description        
• Identify how tasks of the Business Analysis Framework can lead to a prioritized
       set of current and future business objectives
• Case Study Exercise:  Write a Business Use Case Description

Defining the System Scope

• Utilize a Context Diagram to define the scope of a system
• Identify system actors and distinguish between a primary and secondary actor
• Analyze the (System) Process Model and System Context Diagram to identify
       candidate system use cases
• Case Study Exercise: Identify System Actors and Draw a System Context Diagram
• Case Study Exercise: Draw a System Use Case Diagram
• Case Study Exercise:  Write the Use Case Brief Descriptions

• Reviewing Use Cases for priority, risk, complexity, and dependency
•  Exercise: Evaluate and prioritize Use Cases

• Write the steps of the main success scenario
• Describe the sections of a System Use Case Description
• Best Practices in writing Use Case Descriptions
• Case Study Exercise:  Write the main Success Scenario

Writing the Other Scenarios 

• Understand the different types of other scenarios
• Identify alternate scenarios and flows
• Recognize the difference between alternate flows and exceptions
• Write an alternate scenario description
• Incorporate the other scenarios into your Main Success Scenario
• Case Study Exercise:  Write an alternate Flow 
• Case Study Exercise: Write the exception flow

Using Process Modeling to Describe Scenarios (optional)

• Overview of Activity Diagramming techniques
• Use simple UML Activity Diagram notation to graphically describe the flows
        of a use case
• Modeling the Main Success Scenario
• Modeling the alternates and exceptions
• Case Study Exercise:  Draw an activity model for one of the use cases
• Case Study Exercise:  Document the Activities and Descriptions

 Developing a Requirements Specification

• The User Interface 
• Data Specification and Validation
• Business rules
• Introducing the Supplementary Specification for requirements that span
       multiple Use Cases
• Requirements Traceability
• Exercise: Develop a Traceability matrix