SYS366
Week 5 - Lecture 1
Business Use Cases:
How to identify them
&
How to draw them
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Today
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
Identifying Business Use Cases
Business Modeling
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What is a Business Use Case?
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
a case of using the business system
“A business use case describes how a
business actor uses a business to
achieve a goal and what the business
does for the business actor to achieve
that goal.”*
*Use Case Modeling,
by Bittner & Spence, p. 331.
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What is a Business Use Case?

“It tells the story of how the business
and its actors collaborate to deliver
something of value for at least one of
the actors.” *
*Use Case Modeling,
by Bittner & Spence, p. 331.
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What is a Business Use Case?


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“… is independent of the concrete
possibilities and requirements for its
(IT-related) implementation.” *
it’s not about the IT system yet
it’s about using the business system
* Developing Software with UML: Object-Oriented Analysis and
Design in Practice, Bernd Oestereich, p. 72.
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Business Use Cases

How to identify a Business Use Case?

Look for processes the company uses to
satisfy the requests of the business actors
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Processes could be an event that the business
needs to respond to or it could be an event
where the business needs to generate some
kind of response back
Can include manual as well as automated
processes
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Business Use Cases

Where does a Use case start?
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there is always a trigger,
a commercial event
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Customer calls and asks to …
Customer would like to rent a vehicle
Customer would like to conclude a contract
Marketing department would like a statistical
evaluation of reservations” *
* Developing Software with UML, Object-oriented Analysis and Design in
Practice,Bernard Oestereich, p. 74.
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Business Use Cases

Where does a Use case end?

a result that has “commercial value”

A completed order
A letter to the customer
A business management evaluation *

when the customer goes away happy


* Developing Software with UML, Object-oriented Analysis and Design in
Practice, Bernard Oestereich, p. 74.
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Business Use Cases

How to identify the Actors?
Someone who is…
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
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inter-acting with the system by playing a role
asking something of the system
has direct contact with the system
is outside the control of the system
is contacted by the system to provide info
gets something from the system
- a measurable goal is satisfied
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Business Use Cases

Example of Actors:
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Users of the system
Other departments (Marketing, Sales)
Clients or Management
Customers
other systems
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Business Use Cases

Narrative:
A car rental company wants a new Information System to
handle vehicle reservations, rentals, and billing.
The new system will provide all functions directly related to
handling customers. These include customer information,
reservations, vehicle rental, and customer billing.
Internal Accounting, Product Planning, Vehicle Transfer are
not part of the system.
This would be an Agile Epic.
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Finding Business Use Cases


Using this template, let’s identify the
Business Use Cases & their actors.
This is what it might look like
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Today


Identifying Business Use Cases
Business Modeling
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Business Modeling

What is Business Modeling?


It shows how people and business
processes need to work together
Two diagrams support Business Modeling:
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Business Use Case diagram which contains
business use cases and actors
An Activity diagram which describes in more
detail the flow of the Business Processes
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Business Use Case Diagram

“A model of a business (defined in
terms of business use cases, business
actors, and the associations between
them) that describes the requirements
of a business.”*
*Use Case Modeling,
by Bittner & Spence, p. 331.
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Business Modeling

Why Business Modeling?
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It shows the scope of the system
To clarify the context of the system and
gain agreement on the requirements
cross references actors to use cases and
use cases to actors
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Business Modeling
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Why Business Modeling?
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If building a system which will use several
related systems, it clarifies what each
system needs to be responsible for and
what the relationships are between
systems
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Business Modeling

What is a Business Use Case?

A business process that happens within an
organization
Rent a Video
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Business Modeling

What is an Actor?

Someone or something that interacts with
the business process
Customer
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Business Modeling
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Business Use Case Diagram Example
Customer
Rent A Video
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Drawing a Use Case Diagram

Let’s draw the Business Use Case
Diagram from our template for the
Vehicle Rental System
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Vehicle Rental
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Use Case diagram
The above link is to a hands-on lab with
Rational Rose – an object oriented
modelling tool.
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