RE: Use Cases vs. User Stories

Hmm. I don't believe the group is fully conforming to the XP definition of
the "user story". For example, referenced Wikepedia page says:

 

.         Stories are usually more fine-grained <than use cases> because
they have to be entirely buildable within an iteration (one or two weeks for
XP).

 

I think there has been no consideration given to being buildable in short
iterations, etc. Instead, it has been about informal stories as a way to
explain and ground the requirements. Similarly, in my experience, people
commonly use the term "use case" quite informally. In the informal sense,
there is very little difference between a use case and a story.

 

With this I wonder if there was indeed a goal to produce formal use cases
expressed using some standard use case definition template (such as post
conditions, pre conditions, etc.) and possibly including UML interaction
diagrams? 

 

Key differences noted between user stories and use cases are:

 

.         Use cases organize requirements to form a narrative of how users
relate to and use a system. Hence they focus on user goals and how
interacting with a system satisfies the goals. Use case flows describe
sequences of interactions, and may be worded in terms of a formal model.

 

Given this, what system would be described in such use cases? A constraint
validation engine? Something else?

 

.         Must be accompanied and verifiable by test cases.

 

Will there be test cases for the system included with the use case document?

 

Regards,

 

Irene

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Steyskal [mailto:ssteyska@wu.ac.at] 
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2015 4:33 AM
To: Public-data-shapes Wg
Subject: Use Cases vs. User Stories

 

Hi!

 

Since this WG should produce a "Use Case and Requirements" document and we
haven't defined any use cases so far, I was wondering whether we should
start a new wiki page for discussing/defining use cases, the editors should
come up with them, or we stick (at least for now) only to our stories &
requirements?

 

Unfortunately, UC and US are in general not interchangeable[2] (e.g. in [1]
both user stories and use cases are defined.)

 

cheers, simon

 

[1]  <http://www.w3.org/2012/ldp/hg/ldp-ucr.html>
http://www.w3.org/2012/ldp/hg/ldp-ucr.html

[2]  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Comparing_with_use_cases>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Comparing_with_use_cases

 

--

Dipl.-Ing. Simon Steyskal

Institute for Information Business, WU Vienna

 

www:  <http://www.steyskal.info/> http://www.steyskal.info/  twitter:
@simonsteys