Whose use case is it anyway?

As I previously wrote in the blog, German was working on writing the use cases for the customer relation management scope and susbsystem (we call it Cockerr). To be honest, i was afraid of the results. It wasn’t because of German (after all, he was who introduced me to the world of use cases). It was because of two other reasons:

First, transferring what I had in mind for Cockerr to either German or anybody else was a challenge. After many years of being in charge of the design and development of web applications, I have come to the conclusion that the best person for the job of writing the documentation, is the leader of the development team. As such, I am used to transfer that knowledge by, you guessed, writing the use cases by myself. Since German was the one writing the use cases, I had to try hard to tell German all I had thought of Cockerr so that he wouldn’t miss anything.

Second, even if I could tell German everything I had thought, I have found that the only way I actually know what I want, is by writing the use cases. By writing them myself, I come across many challenges that I didn’t think of before. When that happens I can think of a solution and document it right away. That is one of the many reasons I love use cases. This time, however, German was going to be the one facing the challenges. If he couldn’t come up with solutions on the fly, he would have had to ask me. I was afraid that such process could have slowed down significantly German’s task and end up taking more time than if I had written the use cases myself.

Well, on Monday German finished writing the use cases for Cockerr. German did a great job! Yes, it took him several days to write all the use cases, but I would bet that for most people, it would have taken several weeks. The first time I wrote a use case it took me a week…. and it was only one! Congrats German!

Alex