John D. Musa, author and pioneer in software reliability, Amazon.com Review"Excellent Synthesis of Use Cases and Software Reliability Engineering .. should be required reading for anyone working with use cases.."

As a specialist in the field of software reliability engineering, I have always felt that there were many fruitful relationships between use cases and software reliability engineering. Now Richard Denney focuses on these in his excellent new book Succeeding with Use Cases. I was impressed by the user-driven approach and the bridge Denney provides over the language gap between the business orientation of management and the technical orientation of software developers. The book is readable, practical, and filled with examples. It should be required reading for anyone working with use cases ..

Scott Ambler, author and pioneer in Agile software development, Amazon.com Review"Practical and Insightful Advice .. more than just another use case book..."

When I first picked up Richard Denney's book, my initial reaction was "Great, just what the world needs, yet another volume about use cases." Then I noticed the subtitle—Working Smart to Deliver Quality—and thought I should invest a few minutes looking it over. I'm glad that I did. Perusing the table of contents, when I noticed sections entitled "Planning the Length of Iterations and Number of Use Cases in Distributed Software Development," "Setting a Failure Intensity Objective" and "Savings from Avoiding Cost of Unnecessary Development," I realized that this was more than just another use case book. Denney provides real-world advice based on his more than 25 years of experience in software development, on applying use cases effectively in practice. For anyone who wants to improve their use case writing skills, his insights on preconditions, postconditions and invariants are well worth the investment in this book. For project managers, Denney's advice for estimating and scheduling based on use cases is both practical and perceptive.
 

Geri Winters, author of Applying Use Cases: A Practical Guide, Amazon.com Review"This book has a prominent place on my professional bookshelf .."

I was really happy to see Richard's new book. I have always thought that if you are going to go to the effort of writing good use cases, then you should make use of that information as much as possible in the project. This book has a prominent place on my professional bookshelf, and I refer to it often.

Richard Denney gives some great information on using your project use cases in project management, quality control, and reliability. He has a wealth of experience that he shares throughout the book. His book is well written and easy to understand. I am not aware of any other book that covers this information in the context of a software project.

Once you are comfortable with writing use cases (and of course I must recommend my own book Applying Use Cases: A Practical Guide for that purpose), then definitely start exploring what you can do with the use cases once they are written by getting a copy of Richard Denney's book, Succeeding With Use Cases: Working Smart to Deliver Quality.
 

Amazon.com ReviewSound advise for implementation of CMMI "hard practices" Jorge L. Boria "SCAMPI Lead Appraiser"

Wow! What a book! Mr. Denney really succeeds with use cases! ... As a Lead Appraiser for the CMMI I find that Software Engineers fault at applying other Engineering techniques to their problem solving ... Fortunately for all of us, Mr. Denney's book opens up these practices with ease ..

Amazon.com ReviewFills a niche that was crying for attention Reviewer: Jonathan C. "Business Analyst" (Melbourne, Australia)

Having consulted and taught use cases for the past 4 years, I'm wary about picking up another book on Use Cases - what's left to be said? I'm very glad that I looked at Richard's book despite this. Rather than focusing on how to write use cases, Richard has written a book that explains clearly and simply: how to decide which use cases to focus your energies on, managing risk in use cases, how to use use cases to drive test, and how to use pre/post-conditions to find potential defects whilst you write the use cases. Richard has definately found a niche that was crying out for attention

Amazon.com ReviewGood description of use case related disciplines Jeanne B., New York ( see also "Eight Horsehoes" review on Java Ranch :-)

[this book] walks you through four quality engineering disciplines: quality function deployment, software reliability engineering, model based specification and use case configuration management. Most of the book is readable by project managers, while model based specification (pre conditions, post conditions and invariants) is of special interest to developers and testers.

As you can guess, the book assumes you already know about use cases. For the most part, the authors are good about going into detail without making any further assumptions of your background. Examples include concrete numbers and the diagrams are excellent. Once chapter does get theoretical and use algebra, but it is immediately followed by a practical application.

Personally, I found the reasoning and walkthrough of the ROI example to be most valuable. The book does read like a short textbook and academics are explicitly mentioned as one of the target audiences. However, you can tell the book is written by someone who has been through it personally. Overall, I found the book to be a valuable read

Barnes & Noble Review Quality and Use Cases - its about time! Celeste Y. Austin, Tx, A software professional, August 16, 2005

I had recently presented on QFD and am currently working on building use cases so this is a timely book for me. I have been recommending your book to colleagues. Congratulations on an excellent book!

 Amazon.com ReviewNot sure about Use Cases? This book will answer all your questions. J. Fiebrich "Software Quality Professional"

Example after example; model after model! After reading this book, I was ready to begin implementation! Chapter 3, Operational Profiles, will convince and evangelize engineering and management. The degree of detail is perfect for the professional. Great Work!

Amazon.com Review Practicalities of use cases
.. The application of use cases in this book goes further than what is described in the Rational Unified Process ... examples are worked out excellently and instructive. The book focuses on the practicalities of software engineering and addresses primarily project leads, designers, architects and testers .. Robert A. (Munich, Germany)

ACM's Computing Reviews .. good balance of narrative and examples .. well organized and easy to read. It would provide an enriching dimension to courses on software modeling. It presents important issues for people who work with use cases. W. Hankley, ACM’s Computing Reviews

This is a pretty fascinating book. I'm a huge proponent of Use Cases, but have seen very few books that really do a good job of showing actual application. This book not only does a great job of explaining use cases, but takes them a step further by using them for Quality Management through a very creative approach of brainstorming and traceability .. excellent book. Very original!!!
-- Sean McCormack (Microsoft MVP), Adapdev Technologies

Your book is consistent with both my personal philosophy as well as our plans for our organization .. Daryl W, Texas
 

re: QFD in Use-Case Driven Projects

I was fascinated by your use case centric QFD approach in Chapter 1 of the book .. I'm looking forward to applying your approach in a very challenging project .. -- Stian D., Norway

... I really like this [book] ... [I recently did a presentation] on QFD and am currently working on building use cases so this is a timely book for me. I have been recommending your book to colleagues. Congratulations on an excellent book! .." -- Celeste Y, Austin, Texas

I'm enjoying your book! You've saved me vast amounts of time in trying to map QFD to use cases, but I'm actually looking forward to the later parts of the book. Thanks for writing it! -- John F

Denney's book ..  is definitely on my reading list - Joyce, Seilevel, Austin, Texas

re: Calculating Your Company's ROI in Use Case Configuration Management

A-Plus! Everything in here is carefully crafted to reinforce intuition and avoid stirring up controversy in the "we don't need no stinking measurements" faction. The formulas are easily customizable for any IT shop ... furnishes much-needed support to any endeavor intended to bring rigor to the requirements phase of a project, whether it involves choosing an automated tool or simply acknowledging requirements as a project phase in the first place. Thanks a heap! -- Gene F.

Great .. very clear explanations of the logic supporting the calculations, and easily transferable to other environments. Thanks for taking the article beyond just theory .. Nice job! -- Alicia H.

I’ve used a similar model on a previous project. I found working through simulations like those you mention really helped the team to get a deeper understanding of the issues and opportunities -- Seb H., Cambridge, UK

For information about Succeeding with Use Cases: e-mail