Lyle Johnson wrote:

> All,
> 
> I have a basic understanding of what use cases are and their role in
> requirements modeling, but I'd like to learn more about this approach
> (with the hope that it would work well at my company). Can any of my
> friends in the Ruby Community recommend a good, no-nonsense guide to
> developing use cases (i.e. the book that Dave and Andy would write, if
> they were to write a book about use cases)?

I'd like to suggest some alternatives for you:
*) start with "Object Oriented Software Engineering", from Ivar 
Jacobson, read especially the chapters where he introduces the concept 
of use case with the example of the recycling maching (don't have the 
numbers here, sorry, maybe from chapter 7) ==> it's a pleasure to read 
and it gives you all the fundamentals
*) read chapter 3 of "UML Distilled", from Martin Fowler ==> it gives 
you a basic idea about what use cases are and what to do with them
*) then you have to read chapter 6 and 7 of "Applying UML and Patterns", 
from Craig Larman ==> these are very good if you want to build an 
effective iterative process of requirements engineering based on use 
cases (IMHO the only thing that can possibly work if you are not ready 
to take the agile way)

Last step is to experiment: do it a lot, make mistakes, see what works 
well for you and what is bad. Refine as you go.

Have fun! :-)

Giuliano

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