Craig Larman weighs in on how granular use cases should be:
"A common error in identifying use cases is to represent individual steps, operations, or transactions as use cases. For example, in [a] point-of-sale terminal domain, one may (inappropriately) define a use case called 'Printing the Receipt' when in fact the printing operation is merely a step in the much larger use case process, 'Buy Items'.
A use case is a relatively large end-to-end process description that typically includes many steps or transactions; it is not normally an individual step or activity in a process.
It is possible to break down activities or portions of a use case into sub-use cases (called 'abstract use cases') - even down to individual steps - but this is not the norm . . . ."
- Craig Larman's Applying UML and Patterns, page 53
The Story When Apple unveiled its iPod digital music player back in October 2001, I dismissed it as a parity product . I already owned the Cowon iAUDIO CW100 MP3 player, loaded with my favorite tunes. There was Apple, generating great hype over the iPod as if it were a breakthrough product. The idea of a portable digital music player was nothing new. The first mass-produced MP3 players came out in 1998. In late 2001, the concept may have been new to a lot of Apple customers, but it wasn't new to me. I proudly showed my MP3 player to friends when they gushed about the iPod. Thus Apple's iPod was not an innovative product in and of itself. Years later, however, I realized the significance of ecosystem of which the iPod was a part. Apple had released iTunes (with technology purchased from SoundJam MP ) and created the iTunes Store for finding and downloading music. Unlike Napster , it was a safe and legal way of distributing and acquiring music. The prior way of playing
Comments