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Stages  in   use-  case  analysis

The following stages are identified by Schneider and Winters (1998) for analysis using the 

 use-  case  method.

1  Identify actors

Actors

 are those objects which are involved in using or interacting with a system. They are 

not part of the system. The obvious actors are the users of a system. In a customer service 

application the actors may be a customer and the customer service person at the company. 

When performing process analysis to define  use-  cases we ask questions such as ‘Who are the 

actors for this process?’ ‘What services do these actors provide?’ ‘What are the actors’ tasks?’ 

and ‘What changes do they make to the status of the overall process?’ Actors may add infor-

mation to the system or receive it through reporting facilities. Note that an employee who 

has several roles would be represented by two different actors.

Schneider and Winters (1998) point out that other actors include software and hardware 

control devices that change the state of the process and external systems that interface with 

the system under consideration. These are effectively human actors who have been auto-

mated. Actors are denoted using the straightforward approach shown in Figure 11.12.