Tool Mentor: Using RequisitePro to Detail a Business Use Case

Purpose

This tool mentor describes how to use Rational RequisitePro to describe a business use case in detail.

Related Rational Unified Process Activities:

Detail a Business Use Case

Overview

To detail a business use case using RequisitePro:

The business designer writes a business use-case specification document for each business use case. The business use-case specification document defines all textual properties of the business use case.

You can find information on how to add a business use-case specification template in your RequisitePro project in Tool Mentor: Adding Templates to Your RequisitePro Project.

1. Create a Business Use-Case Specification Document

The Business Use-Case Specification document will contain the business use case’s textual properties:

name,
brief description,
performance goals,
basic workflow,
alternate workflows,
special requirements.
From the RequisitePro’s Tool Palette, select Document=>New. The Document dialog comes up.
In the Name field, enter the name of the business use case (this will be the way you refer to the Business Use-Case Specification in RequisitePro).
In the Description field, enter some descriptive text for a business use-case specification. Note that this short description will not be used as the brief description, so simply use a sentence to differentiate business use cases.
In the Filename field, enter a filename (RequisitePro will use this filename when saving the Business Use-Case Specification to disk).
Select the "Business Use-Case Specification Document Type" as the Document Type. The template for this document type organizes the business use case properties into property-specific sections (name, brief description, flow of events, etc…). RequisitePro will open the newly created Business Use-Case Specification document in its Word workplace.

2. Complete the Business Use-Case Specification

In the newly created Business Use-Case Specification document, we will complete each section with the business use case specific information. The name and the brief description properties should already have been documented in Activity: Find Business Use Cases and Actors, either starting with RequisitePro or Rational Roseä , therefore we will copy the brief description information from the existing business use case requirements.

Once the Business Use-Case Specification document is the active Word document:

Replace the "use case name" text displayed in the template by the use case name.
After reading instructions in the Brief Description field provided as default text, delete the provided instructions and copy the brief description information already entered in the Find Use Cases and Actors activity:

On the RequisitePro’s Tool Palette, click on the "Switch to views workplace" icon.
Create a business use case attribute matrix of the business use cases documented in Find Use Cases and Actors: Click on the "Create a new view" icon, select "Attribute Matrix" and the BUC requirement type.
Once the attribute matrix is displayed, click in the Brief Description attribute column and select the brief description text by clicking on the left of the first character and dragging the selection until the last character of the brief description is highlighted.
Hit Ctrl-Ins to copy the selected text. [Note: This is a non-standard Windows copy procedure! Using Ctrl-C will not work to copy this field.]
Bring forward the Use-Case Specification document. Select Window=>Active from the RequisitePro’s Tool Palette, and choose the name of the Use-Case Specification from the list of opened documents.
Position the cursor in the Brief Description section of the document and hit Shift-Ins to paste the brief description text. [Note: This is a non-standard Windows paste procedure! Using Ctrl-V will not work to paste this field.]

Replace the text located in the Basic Flow of Events section with the text for this use case’s basic flow of events. For flow of events, use a step-by-step description, whereby each step is identified on its own line.
Repeat the step above for the other use-case properties (alternate flow of events, special requirements, preconditions, postconditions, etc…).
Save the Business Use-Case Specification document by selecting Document=>Save on the RequisitePro’s Tool Palette.

3. Mark Requirements in the Detailed Business Use-Case Specification

In order to track traceability links between use-case information and other information, such as product features or test cases, we will create RequisitePro requirements in the various Use-Case Specification sections. You do not need to create requirements in each section of the Use-Case Specification. The value of creating requirements is to later being able to trace a higher level requirement, such as a product feature, to a specific part of the use case detailed description. To that extent, we recommend identifying as few requirements as possible (to reduce the amount of work) to feel confident that all higher level requirements (committed with the customer) are traced somehow into the detailed specifications.

Since all properties of a use case belong to that use case, we will use hierarchical requirements and mark the use case name as a parent requirement and its properties as child requirements.

For the business use case name:
In the Word workplace, select the text representing the use-case name and click on the Create Requirement from highlighted text icon on the RequisitePro’s Tool Palette.
In the Requirement dialog, select BUCSEC (use case section) as the requirement type.
Go to the Attributes tab and set the Property attribute to "Name" from the drop-down list of use-case properties.
For the use case brief description:
Repeat the three steps above for the brief description (setting the Property attribute to "Brief Description").
Additionally in the Requirement dialog, click on the Hierarchy tab, select <choose parent>. The Parent Requirement Browser is displayed. Identify the BUCSEC requirement representing the use case name. Click OK.
Use case basic workflow:
In the basic workflow, create BUCSEC requirements for each step or group of steps (subflow) to which you wish to set traceability links.

Important note for all workflows: you do not need to create requirements for each step in a workflow. The value of creating workflow requirements is to later be able to trace a system requirement (features, or system use cases) to a specific part of the workflow. If the workflow is relatively short, it may be enough to be able to trace to the whole business use case.

Set the Property attribute to "Basic Workflow".
Set the requirement’s parent to the requirement created from the business use case name.
Optionally indicate groups of steps which are always performed together. If necessary, use hierarchical requirements to distinguish subflows from the main basic workflow. For example, you might also consider creating a requirement from the "Basic Workflow" heading, even though that heading is not a requirement per se. This will allow later tracing of specific product features to the basic workflow as a whole. This suggestion is most applicable for business use cases with short workflows.
Use case alternate workflows:
In each alternate workflow, create BUCSEC requirements for each step or group of steps (subflow) to which you wish to set traceability links.
Set the Property attribute to "Alternate Workflow".
Set the requirement’s parent to the requirement created from the business use case name.
Similarly to the basic flow of events, use hierarchical requirements to indicate complete subflows.
Use case special requirements:
In the Special Requirements section, if you choose to identify requirements, select each precondition separately.
Create a BUCSEC requirement.
Set the Property attribute to "Special Requirement".
Set the requirement’s parent to the requirement created from the business use case name.

4. Set Traceability to Business Use-Case Requirements Identified

You might wonder why there are two requirement types associated with each use case:

the BUC requirement type,
the BUCSEC requirement type.

The BUC requirement represents the UML modeling element (business use case), which can be synchronized with Rose for visual modeling, ensuring that if business use cases are modified in Rose, these changes are reflected in RequisitePro. During the earlier phases, it is likely that business use case names and brief descriptions will be modified iteratively either in Rose or in RequisitePro. The BUC requirement represents a proxy of the business use case UML modeling element defined in Rational Roseä. The Rational Synchronizer’s role is to maintain the consistency in business use case names and brief descriptions between Rose and RequisitePro.

Linking the BUC requirements to their corresponding BUCSEC requirements allows users to be notified, via suspect links when the original business use cases are revised in Rational Rose or RequisitePro, and possibly changes to their names and/or brief descriptions may impact development. Conversely, if a BUCSEC requirement is changed in the Business Use-Case Specification, RequisitePro will indicate that the matching use case UML modeling element may need to be updated.

To create a traceability link between each use case UML modeling element and its matching BUCSEC requirement, follow these steps:

Click on the "Switch to the views workplace" icon on the RequisitePro’s Tool Palette.
Create a traceability view by clicking on the "Create a new view" icon, selecting "Traceability Matrix", selecting BUC for the row requirement type and BUCSEC for the column requirement type.
Position the cursor at the intersection of the BUC requirement and the matching BUCSEC parent requirement (the BUCSEC requirement with Property attribute set to "Name").
Right click on the intersecting cell and select Trace To from the pop-up menu.
Repeat the two previous steps for each pair of use case UML modeling element and its matching BUCSEC parent requirement.

Rational Unified Process 5.1 (build 43)