A Simple Primer on Use Cases in Product Management

General structure, timing, and nuances of writing use cases from PMTK’s product management perspective

Introduction

Use cases describe how different personas put a solution to use and for which events.

The Use Case technique is used in the product management, product development, and product testing domains.

Use cases are interpreted differently in various product development tools and methodologies such as Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Lightweight Software Development (contemporarily known as Agile).

Complicating matters further are entrenched and inconsistent variations to the use case, which result in a myriad of related expressions.

This simple primer outlines product management’s perspective of a use case, according to the Blackblot PMTK Methdology™.

The Focus of Use Cases

The Use Case concept is employed in both the solution and problem spaces in a variety of ways.

In principle, the concept of a use case has a similar meaning to product managers and product developers.