Writing Effective Use Cases- Alistair Cockburn
Why not user stories?
user stories are for work management
Tree structure
☁️ cloud
🪁 kite
🌊 sea
🐟 fish
🐚 shell
Effective use cases
subject - verb - object
"The application determines the data is valid."
different levels of formality
How use cases have helped us
better understanding by team
better understanding by stakeholders
input for UX design
input for epic kick-off
double check before closing epic
The reality
requires investing energy
some people engage more than others
short-term and long-term value
Slices, thin and vertical
how do you split up the work?
Elephant Carpaccio-workshop
Thin slices
small steps of progress
instead of...
feedback on what you're working on now
instead of last week
Vertical slices
frontend - backend - database
instead of...
rich feedback
instead of narrow feedback
The reality
thin-ish and vertical-ish slices
small epics
challenge of incremental feedback
challenge of greenfield project
Zero bug policy
The why
no backlog full of bugs
done is done,
so done needs to be good enough
The reality
discipline and vigilance
team culture
recently postponed a fix
It's all public!
the code
the designs figma
the pipelines and releases
the documentation
the project board
But why?
because we have to
because we think we should
What it has brought us so far
fuzz testing
What it has brought us so far
six external pull requests (so far)
What it has brought us so far
involvement of municipalities
The reality
it takes more than making the repository public
documentation
reaching out to people
responding to feedback
The four practices I covered
use cases
thin vertical slices
zero bug policy
working in public
this basic Agile stuff(TM),
it works!
adapt practices based on
outcome(s) and principles
quality is something emergent
- Anne-Marie Charrett
you don't test quality in
you don't sprinkle ona little quality at every step
quality is many small things
done right
thank you!
