Adding Features to the Mix
Features get us even closer to the real world of software users. Features are the automated workhorses that the software provides to its end users. They ultimately are used as part of the business processes of the organizations and people that deploy the software. For example, I'm using some features of a word processing application to produce this article. I'll then use some features of an email application to send the article to my publisher. These are some of my business processes; that is, I know nothing of the architecture or use cases that form the basis of these applications. I use just the features, but hopefully these features will have been determined by the software vendor after a thorough analysis and design process.