Review By: Stephen Long
11/09/2003

This book is part of the Agile Software Development Series and is, specifically, a follow-up to Alistair Cockburn’s Writing Effective Use Cases. It provides a set of patterns aimed at improving use case quality. The patterns also provide strategies for dealing with conflicting pressures.

The presentation is well-written, logical, and well-organized, starting from a high level and drilling down to the internal structure of use cases. The first two sections and the last section are development patterns; the middle four sections are use case structural patterns. The inside back cover contains a visual presentation of the relationships among all the patterns. The inside front cover contains a short synopsis (pattern name and solution) for each pattern discussed in the book.

Don’t expect this book to teach you to write use cases. The authors are very clear that Cockburn’s book is a pre-requisite. Patterns for Effective Use Cases is all about improving the quality of use cases. Each pattern addresses a common problem in use case development through a standard framework: pattern name, a picture to help visualize the problem, a context description, the problem statement, a metaphorical story, forces affecting the problem, the solution, and examples.

Since each pattern is designed to stand alone, there is some repetition in some of the descriptions. The authors and a special contributor discuss in detail the use and abuse of include and extend relationships in use cases. The bottom line is that this book makes you appreciate the thought and effort that goes into a set of well-written use cases!

Up to this point in time, I have not been a big fan of use cases. I had a feeling that they weren’t doing what they were supposed to do. Now I know why: almost all the use cases I’ve had to use would not have passed the quality gates suggested in Patterns for Effective Use Cases. In fact, most of the use cases I’ve used have been CRUDDY or, "actor Create data, actor Read data, actor Update data, actor Delete data." This book explicitly lays out the major problems in use case development and provides solutions for each problem.

As a tester, I will be using the Exhaustive Alternatives pattern to justify better use cases for my needs. This book is easy to read and practical. The authors did a good job in organizing the topics. They have a running example to tie pattern usage together.

Most patterns have a “use case horror” example with a cleaned up version after applying the pattern. I recommend this book for anyone writing use cases; it should sit next to Cockburn’s Writing Effective Use Cases on the shelf. As a tester I intend to use the patterns in this book to request clarification for use cases that don’t pass the quality gate.

Patterns for Effective Use Cases belongs in every user case writer’s toolkit. It presents a catalog of patterns that will improve use case quality by identifying process and structural problems and providing solutions. These patterns can also be used as strategies and as a way to deal with conflicting pressures.