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Use Case Diagrams and How To Use Them
Business people get use cases
The use case diagram is not dead. At least the version that we call a “business use case diagram”.
In fact, business people love it. It’s simple and business-friendly. You don’t need special training to interpret it. To most, it’s intuitive and self-explanatory.
How to draw a business use case diagram?
You will need three elements — the boundary, the actors and the use cases.
The boundary (a labelled rectangle) depicts a system or a future solution being designed.
The stick people are the actors — the stakeholders that will use the solution. Think of the actors in terms of the roles — for example, Service Representative or Procurement Manager.
The ovals within the boundary are business use cases. They represent the needs of the actors that will be satisfied by the solution.
They will be connected by lines to the actors that have needs captured inside the ovals.
The purpose of the business use case diagram is to indicate the actors that need the solution, and what they need to use it for.
