Prioritising use cases and scenarios

Use cases (J. Rumbaugh et al., 1997) are currently used in requirements elicitation and analysis. They describe in natural language the complete functionality of a proposed system. In most projects, the amount of detail put into eliciting and documenting a use case is usually dependent on the time and resources available. Seldom is there enough time to fully expand all the use cases. Thus, only a small number of the use cases are ever fully expanded. The paper delves into the structure and importance of use cases, the importance of prioritising requirements and use cases, and then describes a framework that can manage the multi-faceted issues that need to be considered when prioritising use cases. The various components of the tool that are used to prioritise use cases are described, and examples of how the various components assist in ranking use cases are presented.