Activity: Develop Use-Case Modeling Guidelines

Before you start to describe use cases, you must make several decisions about use-case modeling; for example, whether or not to prototype the user interface and which style guide you will use to describe use cases. 

All decisions made regarding any guidelines and strategies for use-case modeling should be documented in Use-Case Modeling Guidelines.

1. Decide How To Write Use Cases
   
   To avoid style inconsistencies decide on a style suitable for describing use cases early in the project. Decide on one common way of describing use cases. Keep in mind the advantages and disadvantages of a common style.
   
   Remember the most important thing about use cases is that they are written in such a way that your customer/user representatives/reviewers understand what kind of system you are offering them.
   
   For more information about how you should write a use case, see Activity: Detail a Use Case.
   
2. Decide When to Start Using Relationships
   
   Decide when you should start using the three relationships in the use-case model: actor-generalization, uses-relationship, and extends-relationship. As a rule, you should not use these relationships in the first versions of your use-case model, since they make the model more complex and difficult to understand.