Questions on smart use cases. Part II – The smart use case life cycle

As you might have heard from me before (endlessly), smart use cases are a fairly straightforward reqirements technique that we have introduced in many different types of projects, such as Java, .NET, BI projects apply smart use cases, but also in service oriented projects, where smart use cases where used to model the front end and also the services and workflow.

At times I receive question on smart use cases in projects, this time from Belgium, by Erwin Bauwens. See Erwin’s original Dutch version below.

Erwin: In the smart use case life cycle all smart use cases go through the same stages (“New”, “In iteration”, “Working”, “Testing”, “Rework”, “Accepted”) from left to right. But, I take it, from “Rework” use cases go back to “Testing”?

And, additionally: it’s only the sub-function level use cases (or the user-goal level use cases without sub-function level use cases) that go through the cycle.

The smart use case life cycle identifies a number of stages smart use cases CAN go through. The stages proposed in Smart (the agile methodology the life cycle comes from) are not mandatory, but represent the most used stages. Some projects add stages such as “Design”, or split “Testing” into “Testing Team” and “Testing Customer”.

Having this simple staged smart use case life cycle allows projects to put up an nice dashboard – either on the wall or white board, or online using a dashboarding tool such as our Agile Dashboard, Mingle or VersionOne.

Example smart use case dashboard

In fact, ALL smart use cases go through this life cycle, not just the sub-function level ones or the user-goal level ones without additional sub-function level use cases. And indeed, coming from “Rework”, it is likely that the use case needs to go through “Testing” again.

Erwin’s original question

In elke iteratie voltooien alle smart use cases alle stages (“In iteration”, “Working”, “Testing”, “Reworking”, “Accepted”) van links naar rechts. Maar ik neem aan dat een item “Reworking” toch eerst weer naar “Testing” verhuist ?

a. Daarop aansluitend : het zijn toch ook maar de secundaire use cases (of primaire use cases zònder secundaire uc) die deze stages moeten doorlopen, niet ?

Met vriendelijke groeten

Erwin Bauwens
One Day Solutions