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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent practical guide
Review: Granville Miller and Frank Armour have created an essential text for understanding Use Case Modeling theory. This book explains the basics of UML in the initial chapters, but quickly moves on to detail advanced Use Case theories and the best ways to apply those theories. I approached the book as a beginner, but had little difficulty understanding the presented ideas and theories. I would recommend this book for anyone involved with Use Case Modeling - from beginner to advanced. For beginners, this book offers a solid introduction and quickly prepares you for the advanced topics. For intermediate to advanced users, this book offers a compilation of theories and practices and is certain to give you insight to pieces of the UML puzzle. Each step of the design process is explained thoroughly, and several alternative procedures are presented. Also, the appendices are valuable references of themselves. They contain a Use Case Development Review Checklist and a complete Development Case, which outlines each major step on the use case modeled development cycle. The authors have also done an excellent job in bringing together information from outside sources to compile their work. Rather than preaching a specific format or model, the reader is presented with many different customizable options for applying the theories in the book. The carefully cited sources also give excellent direction for further reading. I was disappointed to find a flaw with the printing of the book. In my copy the pages containing the table of contents were out of order. However, I found that I was more disappointed because a potential reader might skip this book on the shelf just because of a printing mishap. This information within is too valuable to miss. A real danger with theory books is the potential to either underestimate the reader or talk over the reader's head. This book walks that fine line with ease. I felt that the ideas and terms were presented in a logical and clear manner. It is a valued reference for my work.
Rating:
Summary: Detailed UML Theory and Application Practices
Review: Granville Miller and Frank Armour have created an essential text for understanding Use Case Modeling theory. This book explains the basics of UML in the initial chapters, but quickly moves on to detail advanced Use Case theories and the best ways to apply those theories. I approached the book as a beginner, but had little difficulty understanding the presented ideas and theories. I would recommend this book for anyone involved with Use Case Modeling - from beginner to advanced. For beginners, this book offers a solid introduction and quickly prepares you for the advanced topics. For intermediate to advanced users, this book offers a compilation of theories and practices and is certain to give you insight to pieces of the UML puzzle. Each step of the design process is explained thoroughly, and several alternative procedures are presented. Also, the appendices are valuable references of themselves. They contain a Use Case Development Review Checklist and a complete Development Case, which outlines each major step on the use case modeled development cycle. The authors have also done an excellent job in bringing together information from outside sources to compile their work. Rather than preaching a specific format or model, the reader is presented with many different customizable options for applying the theories in the book. The carefully cited sources also give excellent direction for further reading. I was disappointed to find a flaw with the printing of the book. In my copy the pages containing the table of contents were out of order. However, I found that I was more disappointed because a potential reader might skip this book on the shelf just because of a printing mishap. This information within is too valuable to miss. A real danger with theory books is the potential to either underestimate the reader or talk over the reader's head. This book walks that fine line with ease. I felt that the ideas and terms were presented in a logical and clear manner. It is a valued reference for my work.
Rating: 
Summary: Tells you how to start and when to stop
Review: I have found this book of tremendous help in my work. My first books on use cases focused more on UML rather than use cases. I did not give a hoot on use cases, because they look so simple on paper (and that's why I didn't buy a book specifically on use cases!) But as I grew as a developer, I began to believe that use case modelling if done well can significantly reduce development effort and bring about quality solutions. Use cases are the foundation to the understanding of the system that you are trying to develop. Use cases deserve serious attention. The main problem with use cases is that you either don't know how to start or when to stop. This book tells you both. It tells you how to develop your use case model systematically from scratch and how to make provisions so that your use case model can grow. IMO, that's the main draw for this book. The authors also give good insights on the possible approaches the reader can take to expand his/her use case model iteratively. It cautions the modeller to keep a balanced model so that stakeholders can understand, rather than one that specifies everything but gets bogged down by the details. Semantics, you can get it elsewhere, but this book discusses it pretty well too. The examples are clear and relevant. All in all, Frank and Granville did an excellent job covering the topic.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent practical guide
Review: I strongly recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Guide for Experienced Practioners
Review: It is refreshing to a read a text that caters for those of use who already have experience in this domain and are seeking to develop their skills - without reverting to acadamia style writing. Useful examples, balanced descriptions, and an excellent coverage are all attributes of this text.
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Guide for Experienced Practioners
Review: It is refreshing to a read a text that caters for those of use who already have experience in this domain and are seeking to develop their skills - without reverting to acadamia style writing. Useful examples, balanced descriptions, and an excellent coverage are all attributes of this text.
Rating:
Summary: A very thorough and well-written book
Review: This book has some powerful advice for those projects that use Use Cases to drive their analysis and design efforts. It lays out a good process to follow for developing the Use Cases so you don't jump right into the details without a plan. Much of the advice is good Software Engineering practices, but a lot of people seem to forget that it still applies even when making use of newer techniques such as Use Cases. The chapters pertaining to relating the Use Cases to other artifacts - such as test cases, the User Interface, and the Object Model - offer very practical and sound advice. You can tell that the authors have actually done it before and are speaking from experience and lessons learned. The chapter explaining Extend Relationships offered the clearest and most complete description of the Extend Relationship that I have encountered. All of the writing is very approachable and the examples sprinkled throughout the book and in the Appendixes are very helpful.
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