Use cases

Committing yourself to giving a presentation on a new subject is a great way to learn. You put yourself under pressure, work hard for the presentation, learn a lot and create new material for later use.
Unfortunately my presentation on use cases at the RDW was scheduled quite close on my NIOC presentation. This meant working the entire Easter holidays on the presentation, which included a screening of the use of Use Cases in a particular project. My most relevant find was that they were keeping track of requirements (functional and non-functional), scenarios, use cases (twice, with slightly different titles) and all the mappings between them. Of course it's all useful information but in the end it looked a bit too much overhead to me.

The presentation itself left me with mixed feelings. My public was attentive enough but didn't really react at the end. However, later that day I was at the UMCG and came into contact with a lady who works as a functional designer. We immediately connected on the subject of use cases and I could give her my handouts which were still in my pocket. I felt like I still got some reward for my efforts.