- Let's Review that Process...
- Meet Neil & Gordon...
- Task List
- The Development Process
- ...One More Time
- System Design
- Agile Waterfalls
- Use Cases
- What If...?
- UML State Diagrams
- An Example
- Specification Components
- User Requirements
- ...One More Time
- Creating executables
- Compiled or Interpreted?
- Just-in-Time...
Use Cases
Use cases are just step-by-step descriptions of how a piece of software interacts with people or other software.
Let’s walk through putting together a simple use case. Based on Neil’s description of the problem, we can extrapolate an interaction that looks like this:
- System displays list of products, alphabetically by type (vegetable, meat, herb, etc.).
- User selects item from list; system displays top three suppliers, ordered by preference. For each supplier, display name, phone number, and delivery time.
And that’s it. It may not seem like it, but that really is enough to get started. (You want to make sure you only do enough to get started. It’s easy to over-complicate these things, and that’s a mistake.)
Notice, though, that this use case implies a few others—if the system is displaying a list of ingredients, that list has to be stored somewhere, and there has to be some way to enter it. Same with suppliers. But those are separate use cases. Make a note that they exist, but don’t let them distract you!