- FUNCTIONAL SCOPE
- 2 DESIGN SCOPE
- 3 THE OUTERMOST USE CASES
- 4 USING THE SCOPE-DEFINING WORK PRODUCTS
- 5 EXERCISES
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
3.4 USING THE SCOPE-DEFINING WORK PRODUCTS
You are defining the functional scope for your upcoming system, brainstorming, and moving between several work products on the whiteboard. On one part of the white-board, you have the in/out list to keep track of your scoping decisions ("No, Bob, we decided that a new printing system is out of scope—or do we need to revisit that entry in the in/out list?"). You have the actors and their goals in a list. You have a drawing of the design scope, showing the people, organizations, and systems that will interact with the system under discussion.
You find that you are evolving them all as you move between them, working out what you want your new system to do. You think you know what the design scope is, but a change in the in/out list moves the boundary. Now you have a new primary actor, and the goal list changes.
Sooner or later, you will probably find that you need a fourth item: a vision statement for the new system. The vision statement holds together the overall discussion. It helps you decide whether something should be in scope or out of scope in the first place.
When you are done, you have the four work products that bind the system's scope:
- Vision statement
- Design scope drawing
- In/out list
- Actor-goal list
What I want you to take from this short discussion is that the four work products are intertwined and that you are likely to change them all while establishing the scope of the work to be done.