Rating: 
Summary: It strikes me as both useful and well-written.
Review: The Amazon review does a very good job of summarizing the content. So I'll just clarify that the book is an actor-trigger based view of use cases. While there's certainly room to quarrel about Cockburn's particular flavor (arguments about how to write requirements can approach religious wars), I think that most would agree that he explains his style well.A good place for beginners to start and I think that even professionals quite experienced in requirements definition will find new ways of thinking about system design.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book for Requirements Analyst
Review: The first time i read the book, where's the use case? I'm from UML background type of person. I used to think that use case is a bunch of elipses with line connecting to each other and actors. Since i read this book, hey that wasn't a use case after all. Use cases come in different ways. You can either state them using model / diagram like UML, you can use text description, and many more. They're all covered in this book. It also has many templates which you can choose to describe software/system requirements easily and meaningfully. This book is the book for requirements analysts, who deals with defining understable requirements both for technical side and also the business side. It also useful for anyone who's interested in project management. I use this book also for my undergraduate thesis. This book is a must to be added to your library!!
Rating: 
Summary: Best pure writing use case book
Review: There are a number of Use Case resources out there. Many focus on diagrammatic elements/style of use cases. These I could care less for (Applying Use Cases from Addison-Wesley/3-amigos series is one flop). My users want to review solidly written, concise scenarios IN TEXT. Alistair present a cohesive approach for developing and writing clear use cases. 4 instead of five stars is due to the following: -I reserve 5 stars for classics, and I have yet to be certain this book is one -I did not care for his subtle but odd notation symbols that are proposed as a way of identifying the broad place the use case has in the overall system Still, these were minor complaints. In this book I have a great guide to jump-starting my use case writing process.
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Summary: Use Case Salvation!!
Review: There are a wide variety of books on Use Case writing and design. But few comes as close as Alistair Cockburn's book in discussing Use Cases from practical experiences. Developing Use Cases is not a difficult concept to grasp - it is the part which heavily involves the client and is one of the most critical moments in the software development lifecycle. The difficulty lies in developing Use Cases correctly and efficiently within the software development process. Few development teams have mustered this to perfection. Mr. Cockburn's book gives excellent guidelines in the practical nature of Use Case development which tend to be omitted in most other books. I purchased this book for my development team and we found this a good back-to-basics reference guide for software development.
Rating:
Summary: Indispensable.
Review: This book is filled with both information and examples on how to build use cases to do what they absolutely have to do -- communicate the requirements for software behavior to all involved stakeholders. While Cockburn is perhaps too quick in de-emphasizing most aspects of visual modeling, he is very correct in stating that the model is a small part of the story of the software to be. Happily, Cockburn does not focus much on elicitation techniques (as many other books of its ilk do); frankly, elicitation is probably mostly unteachable and certainly a manner of personal style. Instead, the author focuses on how to distill elicited information into written material that will actually move the project forward. This book probably works very well for a novice. For the more experienced professional, it provides a wealth of ideas to return to. While there are a few bits (the cloud-kite-box indicator scheme comes to mind) that are probably not bound to make an appearance in the average analyst's repertoire, it is hard to imagine anyone dealing in problem domain engineering that wouldn't find considerable value here. Good books have been written on the subject, including ones by Armour and Miller, Kulak, and Conallen. While they might provide valuable context, the Cockburn manual easily stands on its own.
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Summary: Effective Knowledge Transfer
Review: This book takes the task of writing use cases and provides a set of processes and templates that you can use yourself when you need to define requirements for a software project. The author provides many tips and suggestions that you can apply as well as some real world examples from actual projects. There are different approaches talked about which you can choose from, depending on how detailed you can afford to make your use cases. I immediately created a word template based on some of the examples presented in the book...very useful for creating your own process to use when writing use cases. There's also a lot of very useful tips presented throughout the text (along with examples of poor use cases and how to correct them). It's an easy read and provides sections that summarize the key points so that you can use it as a quick reference for future work. I recommend it to anyone working on requirements or design for a project.
Rating:
Summary: Great book on how to ACTUALLY WRITE use cases.
Review: This book was very informative. It really teaches you great techniques for writing Use Cases. It is the best book I've found for writing Use Cases but introduces a couple of concepts that it falls short in conveying understanding. There was never any explanation referring to Extensions meaning Alternative Flow Of Events. This is obvious, so I presumed it to be true. I'm sure many of you know, but nothing explained it, and every example said: None. Even the example that states that an Extension Point is used in the next Use Case, still says: None. There are grammatical mistakes throughout the book (Not a big deal). I felt, that if you read this and stay within the realm of the authors suggestions, and disregard the alternative methods, you should be alright. I would suggest to the author improving the explanations of a White Box Use case, instead of supplementing content with examples. I know what White Box is in Design, but It would be wrong of me to presume the same behavior in a Use Case. The icons are a very handy reminder, and even with all the the perceived problems with the book, I think it's the best one available that I've seen. ESPECIALLY when compared to the Unified Process books.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: This book, along with "Use Cases: Requirements in Context", is one of the best ones out there.
Rating:
Summary: Use Cases Improved
Review: This is an excellent text that covers the various aspects of writing use cases. Cockburn gives a good exposition on the various levels and types of use cases that people use. There is also excellent advice on how to keep from repeating yourself in use case and to keep from cluttering your use cases with conditional logic that is hard to follow. The notion that extensions to use cases include both exceptional and optional behavior simplify use case writing greatly. I have used these techniques and received good responses from my coworkers. Another improvement is splitting the traditional postcondition into minimal and success gaurantees. This idea frees you from the struggle between terminating a use case with a failure and meeting the postcondition. The advice is sound and the examples provide good illustrations for the concepts the author presents. This book is a must read for anyone serious about Writing Effective Use Cases.
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