Use Case Metadata (Requirements Attributes)


Whether you buy a commercial tool specifically designed for requirements management or decide to use the same CM tool you use for source code, or even decide to roll-your-own database application, some thought needs to go into what metadata is needed to support use cases as configuration items (Hass 2003). That decision is driven, in large part, by the metrics you would like to have available for project management and process improvements activities (e.g., in this chapter we are interested in use case metadata in support of project portfolio management).

Metadataa configuration management termis the additional information that needs to be associated with a configuration item (e.g., a use case) to help manage it. It is information that helps a project team manage the use case, but is not part of the use case proper: it's not of interest to the use case actor.

For example, whereas the steps in a use case are part of the use case properthe actor is interested in the stepseffort to implement is metadata of interest to the development team in managing the development of the use case, but the actor really doesn't know or care about effort to implement the use case.

In the requirements engineering and management literature, this information is also referred to for example as "requirements attributes" (Wiegers 1999), or "attributes of product features" (Leffingwell and Widrig 2003). I will use the CM term "metadata" to help emphasize the "up one level" nature of the datait is data about dataspecifically, data about the use case that is not part of the use case per se. The term "metadata" also tends to reinforce the configuration management theme by defining additional fields you need to set up in your CM tool to support use cases.



Succeeding with Use Cases. Working Smart to Deliver Quality
Succeeding with Use Cases: Working Smart to Deliver Quality
ISBN: 0321316436
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 109

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