Tool Mentor: Managing Use Cases Using RequisitePro
Manage use case requirement types and use case hierarchy with IBM Rational RequisitePro.
Tool: Rational RequisitePro
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Related Elements
Main Description

Marking use case requirements can begin as soon as the use case has a brief description indicating its purpose. Hierarchical relationship is suggested when marking use cases. Usually, treating basic and alternative flows as atomic requirements is a balanced solution. You mark the use-case name as a parent requirement and its properties as child requirements. These properties can be brief descriptions, precondition, basic or alternate flow of events, post-conditions, special requirements. See Hierarchical Requirements.

Scenario is not a standard requirement type in RequisitePro, so you need to add it as a new requirement type. Depending on how precisely you wish to track traceability in RequisitePro, you can mark all scenarios as requirements, or optionally you may set traceability directly from use cases to test cases. The advantage of entering scenarios is more granular traceability, with the disadvantage being that it creates more overhead. See Creating and Modifying Requirement Type.

Best Practices for using Use Cases in RequisitePro

Place each use case specification in a separate document in RequisitePro. This allows you to group use case documents, requirements, and views that belong to a single use case into a separate folder. This also keeps documents smaller, as large documents can take longer to open, close, and modify.

Determine what use case template to use before creating the use case document. Templates maintain consistency across use cases in RequisitePro.

Plan a strategy for marking use cases. Consider how granular you should mark your use cases. Bear in mind that tracking use cases at a finer granularity requires more administration. One simple approach is to mark each use case name as a parent requirement and each flow as a child requirement. Plan and test your strategy before applying it to all your use cases.

Detail Use Case Scenarios

Capture use case and scenarios details
There are two possibilities when attempting to update a use case:

  1. Requirements were previously tagged. Expand on details of an existing use case with a previously defined requirement. Updates may be added to the document, or entered in the RequisitePro database through the use case Attribute View.
  2. Requirements are new. Complete the new requirement(s) in the use case document. Later, use the requirement marking strategy (refer to section "Identify and capture use cases and scenarios") to mark the new requirements in the document. See Creating Requirements.

Upon adding the additional details to the use case, the use case attributes need to be reviewed and updated where applicable. Traceability should be updated or established accordingly.