19.UseCaseSpecification

Our Use Cases

From this assignment, I learned that use cases really do help you understand and focus on what the user needs are and reminds a software engineer that the system needs to focus on meeting those needs. I understood the principle of use cases after reading about them, but after having to go through the process of recording them and then reconstructing them into specific use cases, I realized and learned just how important they can be in helping to view the system from the user's perspective.

I also learned that making the use cases specific really does help and not hinder understanding the needs of the user. Originally I thought that if you make the use cases specific, then you would only be getting the user needs for that specific situation. However, after writing use cases, I realized that while some of the user needs that you learn from use cases may only apply to that particular case, other specific needs can be extracted from the use case that apply to the system as a whole. If you wrote only general use cases, then you would only be able to extract general user needs which may not prove to be very helpful at all.