Use case / user story - who cares?

So much for resolutions. It has been almost a month since my last post and I feel suitably disappointed with myself. And today I only have a short post:

I am repeatedly surprised by the vehemence of different analyst communities on issues of approach (and predictably on the rightness of their approach over all others). One consistent topic that always seems to provoke strong reactions is the question of requirement documentation via use case versus user story.

Personally I suspect that either and/or both approaches can be usefully applied (but then I always was a tiresome moderate) and that ultimately it mostly depends upon the content - I have seen (and written) variants of both that failed to extract what the underlying goal and business need of the user is and the sexiest template in the world was never going to fix them.

That said, I do appreciate that both approaches have value and should be in the analyst's arsenal. So I was delighted to read a posting on John Babcock's blog providing a great overview of thinking on this topic - he has put together a bunch of links to articles and sites that compare and contrast the approaches (of course both Fowler and Cockburn are represented, but there are several other interesting sources).

On reflection, I like the simplicity of user stories and their closeness to real world language, but they do not replace a well constructed use case model (as often as not, it is the model rather than the details that is really valuable) to help make sure that the requirements are complete. So both have value - use what makes sense for a given situation (and that could easily mean both) - how heavyweight do you need to be to ensure that you are capturing all the complexity of your project?

So, no strong reaction on my side. How moderate and boring.

Tough.

Authentic experience - the next level of economic value?

I know it is becoming a little bit too much of a recurring theme, but today's TED lecture is a cracker. It is fairly uncontroversial and familiar terrain (the progressive shift from products to services and then to selling experiences to differentiate to the customer). Joseph Pines basically argues that "authentic" experience is becoming a key to successs and provides a nifty corporate 2x2 matrix ("true to self" vs "be what you say you are") to show various flavours of experience. He gives a few simple commercial experience examples and manages to frame it all with a quote from Hamlet, all in 14 minutes.

Here it is:

ModernAnalyst.com

I came across modernanalyst.com a while ago, but was unimpressed. Quite apart from the name (which sounds to me like it should be a BBC television series from the open university from around 1982, populated by men in checkered shirts with beards discussing the philosophical differences between this and that), it was entirely lacking in content.

Luckily for me, I noticed a link to an article on the site about trends in business analysis for 2009 and although this particular article was not so great - "analysts are at the centre of all successful IT projects" seemed to be the underlying tone - it forced me back onto the site, which has been greatly enhanced.

It is full of interesting articles, a load of useful templates for download and a pretty active forum. It is this forum that I think will be valuable - it is all too easy to forget that there are people out there with exactly the same issues and concerns that you have, and there really is no need to reinvent the wheel - it is enough of a challenge to get one's head around the business, so leave the process templating to the world at large and profit from it!

They also seem to have affiliated themselves with the IIBA (International association of business analysis) - another organisation that I had been unimpressed with until fairly recently. The latest version of the "BABOK" that they produced is much improved - although it is still a bit heavyweight and "stodgy" (for want of a better word) and it looks like they are getting positive feedback for their analyst accredidation scheme.

A very happy and successful 2009

Resolutions for the New Year? Well privately I have any number, but one that I am willing to post is that I have resolved to post an item a week on average this year. Today the post is short and to the point: the latest manager-tools podcast is a good one worth listening to if you are new to project management. Horstman has reduced his approach to project management to one simple statement "Who does what by when?" - not a bad summary! I have only heard the first part of this extended podcast, but it is promising start - just ignore the "we are the heroes" undertone. I expect that the "trademarked" actionable content of the advice is going to be in the follow on casts.

You can find it here at the newly upgraded and improved manager-tools.com.

PS: I will save the (predictable) story related to my flight being delayed yesterday for another day.