Communicating user needs – the requirements of a system – is a skill difficult to learn, pin down and put into practice. There is no single right way. Much of the recent history of large engineering projects has been a tale of waste and error, where system needs were not defined early, or carefully, enough. Carefully organised and themed, Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases presents the scenario – a powerful antidote to the complexity of systems and analysis - as an effective technique for discovering, communicating and organising requirements at any stage in the system life-cycle.

This book presents a range of scenario techniques from light, sketchy and agile to careful and systematic, and celebrates diversity in requirements discovery and modelling. Including real world case studies from Nokia, Eurocontrol and DaimlerChrysler, the authors demonstrate a variety of practical approaches to show how to apply scenarios to projects throughout the life-cycle. Domain coverage spans custom software, integrations of COTS software packages, and embedded hardware/software systems. The scenario techniques described differ in many respects, but share a motivation to improve industrial practice, a clearly defined approach which has been applied on projects, and a grounding in theory.

Stories are quite insistent on one point: a tale is not over until it is finished in every detail. Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases communicates a practical approach to ensure that every detail of a project’s requirements is considered, making systems more reliable, safe, and secure. The rich wealth of stories will engage requirements engineers, developers, usability and human factors specialists, and systems and business analysts.