Re: Draft report and use cases

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 12:12:08PM -0800, Karen Coyle wrote:
> Basically, I see the use cases as providing information for the
> report -- but I'm not sure that there is a place for the clusters or
> cases in the report itself. To me the uses cases serve to identify
> *issues* by providing some examples of projects people are
> attempting or interested in. But those projects are just examples --
> and not necessarily representative or complete. As we develop the
> document it may be useful to use some of the use cases as
> illustrations, but unless they have a specific role in our
> exposition, I wouldn't try to force them into the report.

I do agree that we should not force the use cases into
the report.  And if we do nothing more with the use cases,
they will remain as frozen wiki documents -- and maybe that's
enough!  I was thinking it could be useful to have an annotated
listing of use cases, perhaps in an Appendix, but that would
take some effort -- hence my suggestion that someone start by
proposing a solution.  If I correctly understand your point,
you are in fact proposing a solution, which I take to be that
we just leave them as frozen wiki documents.

In the absence of other proposals, doing nothing is at any
rate the default solution.  I'm not going to argue that we
should divert resources and attention from other tasks to the
use cases, but I also don't think it would take much effort
to prepare a tidy list.  On the other hand, if it is true
that the use cases, as a whole, present a misleading picture
of the real issues, that does indeed strengthen the argument
for simply doing nothing.

Tom

-- 
Tom Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>

Received on Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:41:09 UTC