Instructor Notes Module 5: Analyzing Information: Use Cases and Usage Scenarios Introduction This module provides students with the first step toward taking information that they have gathered and organizing it to describe the current state. Students work with use cases and usage scenarios to describe workflow processes in the Ferguson and Bardell, Inc. case study. After completing this module, students will be able to: ! Describe a process for synthesizing information. ! Explain the concepts of use cases and usage scenarios. ! Create use cases. ! Create usage scenarios. Materials and Preparation This section provides you with the materials and preparation needed to teach this module. Materials To teach this module, you need the following materials: ! Microsoft ® PowerPoint ® file P05_1585.ppt ! Module 5, "Analyzing Information: Use Cases and Usage Scenarios" ! Activity 5.1, "Transitioning from Gathering to Analyzing Information" ! Activity 5.2, "Creating Use Cases" ! Activity 5.3, "Creating Usage Scenarios" Preparation To prepare for this module, you should: ! Read all the materials for this module. ! Complete the activities. ! Review relevant portions of The Unified Modeling Language User Guide by Grady Booch, James Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson. Presentation: 60 Minutes Activities: 85 Minutes 2 Instructor Notes Module 5: Analyzing Information: Use Cases and Usage Scenarios Activities This section provides procedures for implementing interactive activities to present or review information, such as games, simulations, or role-playing exercises. Activity 5.1: Transitioning from Gathering to Analyzing Information ! To prepare for the activity 1. Review the case study. Up to this point, students have been engaged in reviewing the case study to determine the problems with the timesheet system that consultants use at Ferguson and Bardell, Inc. The purpose of the class discussion is to ensure that students realize that they now need to shift gears and look at the information critically to document the current state so that they can determine the user and business requirements related to the business challenge. Student can identify current state and future wants during the discussion, but be sure that they identify whether each of the statements would be considered a current-state requirement or a want for an application solution. The purpose of this part of the activity is to get students to think in terms of analyzing the information. They will go into more detail for the activities in Module 6. Have students reflect on any process that they might have gone through previously, in terms of analyzing large amounts of information to determine what is happening in a business. Use your experience to provide examples. Also, ensure that students have the opportunity to regularly reflect on the importance of such factors as security, maintainability, extensibility, and performance, all of which will affect the development of the final product. Activity 5.2: Creating Use Cases ! To prepare for the activity 1. Review the case study. 2. Create use cases for the case study. Observe students’ progress in the activity. If they are having trouble, create a few use cases as a class and then have them resume individual work. At the end of the activity, create a list with the class for both the consultants and the administrative assistants. Quickly look at other parts of the case study to have students call out use cases as a means to verify that students understand how to develop use cases. Once again, ensure that the students’ use cases are focused on describing the current state and on how things currently work, not on how they could be changed. Questions for Class Discussion The following questions can help start a discussion of the activity: ! Can you suggest hidden users and systems that you would need to investigate? ! To what extent have you used use cases in your work? Instructor Notes Module 5: Analyzing Information: Use Cases and Usage Scenarios 3 Activity 5.3: Creating Usage Scenarios ! To prepare for the activity 1. Review the case study. 2. Develop usage scenarios for at least two of the use cases so that you can use them in class if necessary. Students may have trouble determining the amount of detail that they should use for the usage scenarios. Remind them to look at the case study and review the steps that the consultants and administrative assistants must follow when entering information on to the timesheets. As you discuss usage scenarios that students developed, indicate where a usage scenario contains tasks that could be developed into additional use cases and usage scenarios. Questions for Class Discussion The following questions can help start a discussion of the activity: ! Now that you have written usage scenarios, did you discover information that you need to go back and gather? 4 Instructor Notes Module 5: Analyzing Information: Use Cases and Usage Scenarios Module Strategy Use the following strategy to present this module: ! Transitioning to Analysis The purpose of this section is to point out to students that they are moving from one phase of gathering and analyzing business requirements to another stage. Students need to understand that they need to both analyze the information and assess the quality of the information that they have gathered about the business. In addition, students should keep in mind information related to the business, applications, information, and technology that the project will need to take into account to be successful. ! Activity 5.1, "Transitioning from Gathering to Analyzing Information" Use this activity as an opportunity to reflect on the gathering process that the students have just completed and the importance of validating information with other project team members. ! Use Cases Students need to understand that use cases and usage scenarios are the first steps in clearly describing the current state. Use cases and usage scenarios provide the basic structure to the information that has been gathered. The information from the gathering phase is captured in many ways and many different formats. Moving the information into the use case format begins the process of taking randomly structured information and putting it in a common format that is easier to validate with the sources and easier to communicate to the development team. Students should also understand that many similar sources have provided information in the gathering phase. For example, the team may have talked with three different people who perform the role of administrative assistant. Each interview would be transformed into its own set of use cases. Often, these use cases will contain duplicate information. Students will organize the use cases in the next module. Students should follow this process to help ensure that they obtain a more complete understanding of system use because some sources will include and omit different kinds of information. ! Activity 5.2, "Creating Use Cases" Verify that each student is able to create use cases. They will use their use cases in Module 6. If students have problems creating use cases, develop a set with them that they will be able to use later. ! Usage Scenarios When discussing the objects, you should point out to students that the models developed during conceptual design will be used by the development team during logical design. All of the steps that they are performing are part of the conceptual design process. Emphasize that they need to describe the current state accurately and completely because it relates to the business challenge. Additionally, usage scenarios are an excellent tool to help the development team understand how the users interact with the system, not just what tasks the user accomplishes. In determining how many usage scenarios to create for a system, you can again suggest the hierarchical nature of usage scenarios and how they can potentially identify use cases that were missed during the initial analysis and that need to be separated out into high-level use cases. Also, you can suggest that use cases, which are not as well understood by the project team or the users, may require many scenarios to increase the level of Instructor Notes Module 5: Analyzing Information: Use Cases and Usage Scenarios 5 understanding. In the end, it comes down to experience and the ability to accomplish this process in an iterative fashion. If the project team finds that several members disagree or that it does not have enough information to proceed, they can go back in the process and create additional usage scenarios or use cases, or gather additional information. ! Activity 5.3, "Creating Usage Scenarios" Work with students to identify at least one use case from a usage scenario and have them develop a new usage scenario for the use case as a group. THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK . of Instructor Notes Module 5: Analyzing Information: Use Cases and Usage Scenarios 5 understanding. In the end, it comes down to experience and. written usage scenarios, did you discover information that you need to go back and gather? 4 Instructor Notes Module 5: Analyzing Information: Use Cases and