Hi:
I recently did a contract job at a large company that taught Use Cases to everyone short of the cleaning crew. I had to look at the larger part of the company's requirements specs for what I had to do (larger scale integration). The end result of all that education: Zippo, zero, nadda-one actually created Use Case.
I can not believe that some how I got involved with a company that, by coincidence or act of GOD, was loaded with hundreds of developmentaly slow BAs.
Tony
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Tony,
My heart bleeds for you . I shall beseech God to be more generous and send some worthy students your way. Should you pass my house late at night this week you shall see that I'm burning a candle in the window; just for you!
As a "serial contractor" myself, I'd say take the money and move on.
All the best, mate.
warm regards,
K
Thought I'd add my 2c in here.
I've used UML in my BA work for 8 years. Interesting that some of you separate UML and use cases. To me use cases are central to UML regardless of who invented what. UML is not just a bunch of diagrams. As has been mentioned eloquently by others, UML is just a different way of looking at the same thing. I happen to like the user interaction approach. It makes more sense to me than the old Data Flow Diagram approach. UML has for some time been the industry standard in software development in my experience - Australia, US, UK. Granted this is just my experience though. UML is a good transferable skill. Its probably my biggest unique selling point in the marketplace.
Regarding tools, I've been working on a project for about 6 or 7 weeks using Enterprise Architect for the first time and I have to say I'm impressed. Very flexible. I find that as we think of new things we want to do that we can generally figure out a way to do it. I used a tool for the previous couple of years called Holocentric that I really like. It doesn't have the coverage of EA but has an approach to process mapping that I really like that is absent in EA. The thing is Holocentric is roughly 20 times the price of EA. Think the desktop version of EA is only about 200USD. I don't own a copy but will buy one before I move onto my next contract.
Just for the record I have no affiliation with EA or Holocentric except as a customer.
Been introduced to the wonders of BPMN on this project. What's that all about then? Time for some more study I guess. Can anyone recommend a book or website as an idiot's guide to BPMN please?
Oh and bapm this isn't an invitation for a posting flogging your training ;-)
Kimbo
Kimbo,
An idiot's guide to BPMN...? Try the BPMN template on this site: if know how to do event driven process models and partition processes already, this will show you what the BPMN notation calls Processes, Process Breaks (one of the best features of BPMN) etc.
I am writing a 'how to process model' article for this site due to be published in April based on BPMN notation as this is the alleged current standard...
Guy
Thanks Guy. I'll check it out tomorrow at work.
Curious to see your article. I've a fair bit of experience in BPM in recent years.
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