Chapter 6 - Scenarios
Scenarios.
According to the book we have reached up-to a stage, after learning about BUCs (Business Use Cases), identifying the business events and respond to the events. We have reached at scenarios to model and record the BUCs. We use scenarios a number of times, and find them to be very useful, mostly because of their ready acceptance by nontechnical stakeholders.
Formality Guide
Scenarios are useful in many of the situations-anyone can understand them, and they fit into every development style.
Rabbit projects can use scenarios as a trawling technique. The requirements analysts and the appropriate stakeholders come together to build a scenario for the business use cases.
Horse projects may consider scenarios as an alternative to writing atomic functional requirements. When they have been developed enough, they can serve to inform the developers of the functional needs of the product.
Elephant projects make use of scenarios as a discovery tool. The meetings with the stakeholders are occasions for reviewing the desired way of working for each of the business use cases.
Rabbit projects can use scenarios as a trawling technique. The requirements analysts and the appropriate stakeholders come together to build a scenario for the business use cases.
Horse projects may consider scenarios as an alternative to writing atomic functional requirements. When they have been developed enough, they can serve to inform the developers of the functional needs of the product.
Elephant projects make use of scenarios as a discovery tool. The meetings with the stakeholders are occasions for reviewing the desired way of working for each of the business use cases.
Scenarios
A scenario, to give it its proper meaning, is an outline of a plot, or a postulated sequence of steps. In requirements work, we use this term to mean the plot of a section of the work we are studying. The use of “plot” is intended to imply that you break the work into a series of steps or scenes, and by explaining these steps, you explain the work.
The Essence of Business
The scenario, as we now have it, represents the current incarnation of the work. If you think back to the Brown Cow Model from Chapter 5, and the video we watched in the class, this scenario belongs to the first quadrant of the model—the How-Now view of the work.
To move above the line and look at the What-Now and Future-What views, you must consider the essence of the problem. To do so, go back over the scenario and eliminate any technological bias, while simultaneously asking the question, “What does the business really need to do?” The essence is not a better solution to the problem—it is the real problem. You find the real business problem when you eliminate all the technological camouflage that normally makes up a description of some work.
Diagramming the Scenario
Some requirements analysts-and some stakeholders-prefer to use a diagram to explain the functionality of a business use case. This preference is a matter of personal choice, and it depends largely on whether your audience responds more favorably to text or to diagrammatic scenarios. We leave it to you to experiment and decide which form of representation is right for you. Several diagrams can be used for scenarios. The UML (Unified Modeling Language) activity diagram is a popular choice. BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) also has its adherents, as do other styles of diagram. There is no best approach—just pick one that you like, or that your organization already uses. Figure 6.2 from the book shows the airline check-in example as a UML activity diagram.
Scenarios are very effective in most situations as anyone can understand them easily. They tell us the story of a Business Use Case. A Business Analyst use a scenario to explain a business use case to the interested stakeholders. A scenario is written by breaking the functionality of the Business Use Case into series of steps which are meaningful activities and usually there are three to ten steps as told in the blog. Once the scenario is agreed by the stakeholders then it is used to form the basis for writing requirements.
ReplyDeleteBusiness use cases gives you the best solution for understanding your system's ability to meet the needs of end users. It describes each business scenario of system which need to be addressed and how a potential user might use.A Business Use Case is one in which the design scope is business operations. It is about an actor outside the organisation achieving a goal with respect to the organisation
ReplyDeleteA scenario, to give it its proper meaning, is an outline of a plot, or a postulated sequence of steps. In requirements work, we use this term to mean the plot of a section of the work we are studying. The use of “plot” is intended to imply that breaking the work into a series of steps or scenes, and by explaining the steps
ReplyDelete