Rating: 
Summary: A great path to follow
Review: Being in the middle of a messy project this book came to me a little late. I consider is one of the best introductions to
the understanding of what a use case is and WHAT things you should put in it. Everbody has suffered for long endless meetings discussing which is the scope of the use cases and how it should be used, I strongly recomend to read this book before start arguing.
I give it four starts because it lacks in some way of paths that can work as guidelines trough the process, although is not the focus of this book, it would very useful to include a couple of pages reviewing this subject.
Rating: 
Summary: A Practical Guide to the Art of Requirements
Review: Eamonn and I tried hard to write a book that would be useful from day one for people trying to gather requirements for business software applications. Our book is short on theory and long on practical techniques and useful examples. We've used some of the tools available in the industry, invented a few of our own, and, most importantly, used the whole process on many projects in our consulting lives. Plus, we've included over 100 pages of examples of use cases and the supporting documentation that we're sure you'll find useful.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than "the original"
Review: I compared several Use Case books before I finally bought this one; "Use Cases: Requirements in Context" is an excellent choice for the everyday practitioner.
Rating: 
Summary: Use Case Religion
Review: I found it hard to believe anything these guys said. They put up strawmen so they could attack other methods of gathering requirements. Their use cases had exactly the same flaws they criticized earlier in the text. The book seemed more like a sermon than a serious discussion of use cases. On the other hand, it did have lots of step by step detail on how to do use cases. I am looking for another book on use cases.
Rating:
Summary: Use Case Religion
Review: I found it hard to believe anything these guys said. They put up strawmen so they could attack other methods of gathering requirements. Their use cases had exactly the same flaws they criticized earlier in the text. The book seemed more like a sermon than a serious discussion of use cases. On the other hand, it did have lots of step by step detail on how to do use cases. I am looking for another book on use cases.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book for Use Case driven Requirements Modeling
Review: I saw this book in a stall, while searching for some other book. I had a glance at it and really liked the simplicity and practical approach. Once I bought it and read it completely, I felt happy to find such a great book on Requirements Study. To read and understand this book you need not have a lot of experience or a Requirements Specialist. I feel anyone from Programmer to Project Manager will find this book very useful. The authors teach you in a very practical manner, how to come out with good Use Cases. I enjoyed reading this book, applied the concept in my projects while doing Requirements Study and now can happily recommend this book to others.Three cheers to the authors for a great work. Note: I found Craig Larmen, while talking about Use Cases in his best selling book on UML and Patterns talks highly about this book.
Rating:
Summary: Very practical applications and examples
Review: I've been involved in Use Case development and Requirements Management for several years, and this book is a welcome addition to my library. Its the first book I've found on the subject of requirements definition that's truly a non-nonsense, pragramtic guide that offers immediate application to common requirements definition and change management problems.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Use Case Book I've Read So Far
Review: Programmers naturally hate use cases. They seem boring, and having seen hundreds of them (written by others and handed to me) over the years, I had lost hope that this practice would ever be of any benefit. I had grown tired of constantly reading varying levels of abstraction and 'use-case-itis'. All this, despite the fact that Jacobson's original work and the UDP incorporation of use cases as central to that process was clearly a better way to go than wading through hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages of 'shall' statements that accompany most projects (and too often, lead to their failure). Then I read this book. I now use it regularly in every requirements-related class I teach, and I tell every programmer I meet to buy this book. Imagine a use case book that programmers can actually get excited about! This book blazes new territory and its practical insights and humor make it a fun read, as well. Here are the great highlights:
1. Properly scoping and relating use cases
2. Introducing Business Rules as 'first-class citizens"
3. Applying UDP iterations to the use case development process. These last two items make the book stand out. Understanding the importance of business rules as enterprise-wide invariants that span use cases is ground-breaking. The four UDP iterations are ingenious because they can help to enforce the proper level of abstraction, which is a big problem area for use cases. Try it, you'll like it! In addition, the book is loaded with great practical advice and examples of good (and bad!) use case text. And finally, the authors present the most compelling arguments I've ever heard for ditching traditional requirements-gathering methods (which have clearly FAILED), because use cases are, after all, requirements IN CONTEXT (like the title says). If every use case writer read this book and followed it's advice, the software crisis would be dealt a serious blow. Bottom line : If you write use cases (or worse, are forced to implement bad use cases at gunpoint), get this book!
Rating:
Summary: A practical approach on use cases
Review: The authors describe a use case-driven approach to requirements gathering. Almost half of the book is dedicated to case studies. Basic concepts on requirements specification are described in the first chapters. If you are new to use cases and UML, I think that the book will be very useful. If you are already working with use cases, it will probably improve your work using some of the advices and techniques described.
Rating:
Summary: Useful Use Cases
Review: The best thing about this book is that the authors are not meekly presenting just a stream of bland bromides that echo the sentiments of a million other talking heads. On the contrary, they are quite opinionated and their opinions often illuminate some of the most important issues in the whole raging process debate. Specifically, their discussion of the uselessness of requirements that just appear as a gigantic list of commandments is truly on target. (The writers espouse attaching requirements to the appropriate [and specific] use case.) They also do a good job of dealing with the issue of scope and developing use cases for specific uses. Everyone who's read about use cases has confronted the issue of how to 'refine' them but this book does a better job than most at underlining the importance of scope in the iterative process. The downsides of this book (IMHO) are: 1. The diagrams are all very simplistic. There really is no point in using a pictographic medium if there's nothing there. 2. The models that are talked about are also too simplistic (but I say that about every book). 3. There is a little bit of smugness about how *their* way is the sane and obvious answer to all that ails developers. Still, I think this is one of the best Use Case books out there.
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