Agile Business Analysis: Writing Lean BUSINESS Use Cases

Enable Stakeholders to Capture, Organize, and Communicate Functional Business Requirements for a Digital Solution

Classroom Live ONSITE – Duration: 2 days (14 PDU/CDU)
Classroom Live ONLINE – Duration: 2-5 days (14 PDU/CDU)
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Course Overview

Use Cases Define Interaction between People and Technology

A Use Case describes what a piece of software does or needs to do. As a business user of IT solutions, a Use Case enables you to talk to technologists about your IT business needs in a manner they can understand. As a technical professional, a Use Case enables you to talk about technology to the business community without using technical jargon.

Use Cases are a commonly used business analysis technique to define the interactions between people and technology. They are the de facto standard for documenting and communicating functional requirements. Applying the lean philosophy of waste reduction to the Use Case concept creates a powerful tool for communication to and within an Lean or Agile Software Development team.

Writing a Lean Use Case is a skill that anyone in an organization can easily acquire. Learning how to write and manage lean business- and solution-level use cases is a major step in getting your IT applications to do what you want them to do. Knowing why you need a Lean Use Case, when to create one (especially in a lean environment), and where to put what information is critical to creating high-quality functional requirements.

What You Will Learn in this Workshop

This 2-day exercise and example-rich business analysis training course explains the who, what, when, where, how and why of Lean Use Case models. You will learn where use case diagrams fit in the overall process of traditional and lean software development. To easily discover Use Cases, we include a section on event-response analysis to identify use case triggers. This section can be extended to include an additional day on learning how to create activity diagrams for visually representing the internal flow of control within a Lean Use Case.

After finishing this course, you will be able to write high-quality Use Cases defining actors, preconditions, postconditions, main paths, alternate paths, and exception paths. In addition, you will learn how to deal with non-functional requirements.

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You can get a taste of Use Cases in our FREE KnowledgeKnugget What Is a Use Case

We Tailor the Content to Fit Your Needs

At no cost to you, we can assemble an optimal set of training topics based on your group’s current and desired business analysis skill levels. We can also use our Business Analysis Skills Evaluation (BASE) tool to establish these levels.

or call 702-625-0146

Target Audience

Product Owners
Business Analysts
Requirements Engineers
Business- and Customer-side Team Members
Agile Team Members
Subject Matter Experts (SME)
Project Leaders and Managers
Systems Analysts and Designers
AND “anyone wearing the business analysis hat”, meaning anyone responsible for defining a future IT solution

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this skill-building experience, you can:

Define and defend the need for Lean Use Cases
Integrate Lean Use Cases and User Stories to express detailed, solution-level requirements
Apply Business Event Analysis to discover Lean Use Cases based on business activities
Document user interaction in Lean Use Cases descriptions and diagrams
Describe the major components of a Lean Use Case
Analyze business scenarios to discover Lean Use Cases
Determine how to handle alternate and exception situations
Associate non-functional requirements to Lean Use Case paths and steps
Develop business-facing acceptance tests that support automated testing, Acceptance-Test Driven Development (ATDD), and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
Plan to incorporate selected techniques to improve performance on the job

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Detailed Course Outline

1 Overview of Lean Use Cases

Lean and Agile: Philosophies that Make Sense
Lean Requirements Defined
What is a Use Case?
Use Case vs User Story
The Value of Lean Use Cases

2 Finding and Defining Lean Use Cases

Of Business Events and Use Cases
Business Events
From Business Events to Use Cases
The Role of Actors
Finding and Naming Actors
Primary and Secondary Actors
The Use Case Brief

3 Lean Use Cases in Diagrams

Lean Use Case Models
Representing the Actor
Use Case Diagram Conventions
Comparing Include and Extend Relationships
Additional Use Case Details
Summary of Extensions and Inclusions

4 The Power of the Standard (Happy) Path

A Simple Use Case Specification
The Use Case Path: The Road Most Travelled
Pre-conditions (Before the Beginning)
Post-conditions (When All Is Said and Done)
Exercise: Process Order Standard Path

5 The Real Value in Lean Use Cases

The Proper Procedure for Dealing with “Ifs”
Developing Alternative Paths
Capturing Exception Paths
Using Scenarios: A Bottom-Up Approach
Slicing a Use Case for Agile Development

6 Levels of Detail in Lean Use Cases

Different Use Cases for Different Decisions
Business Use Cases
Solution Use Cases
System Use Cases
Solution versus System Use Cases
Detailed System Use Case
Summary

7 The Role of Non-Functional Requirements

What Measures Add Value to a Use Case?
Keys to Success
Who Handles the Non-Functional Dimension?
Use Cases in Context
User Views and Use Cases
Data and Use Cases

8 From Showtime to Go Time!

Understanding the Learning Curve
Exercise: My Techniques
My Personal Implementation Plan